


Stay Sweet

by granger_danger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Being Walked In On, Charlie Weasley is Universally Beloved, Coming of Age, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Hermione Granger is in Denial, Hopeful Ending, Humor, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Marijuana, Mutual Pining, Only One Bed by which I Mean Only One Tent with Only One Sleeping Bag, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Humor, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Summer Romance, Swearing, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, camp counselors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:14:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24350386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/granger_danger/pseuds/granger_danger
Summary: A tender romantic comedy/coming-of-age tale in which Hermione Granger is trying to savor her last summer at camp, thank you very much, but Charlie Weasley keeps disrupting her plans by doing sweaty shirtless push-ups on the lawn.“H.” Charlie cast her a sly, sideways glance through the amber gradient of his aviators. “Want to see how Old Blue shifts?”Hermione didn’t care how Charlie’s truck shifted and Charlie knew it, but she laid her clammy hand over his anyway. A recklessness was unfurling in some dark pit of her heart.*1988 American Muggle Summer Camp Counselor AU, written as part of Rare Pair Spring Fling 2020*
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Charlie Weasley
Comments: 206
Kudos: 255
Collections: RPSF 2020: Summer Camp





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The biggest of thanks to the Rare Pair Spring Fling dream team: [PacificRimbaud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PacificRimbaud/pseuds/PacificRimbaud), [provocative_envy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy), [scullymurphy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullymurphy/pseuds/scullymurphy), and [the_static_hum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_static_hum/pseuds/the_static_hum). Working with you all has been a true honor, a pure delight, and so much fun that I am at perpetual risk of spraying water all over my computer from laughing so hard.
> 
> I cannot thank [dreamsofdramione](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bugggghead/pseuds/dreamsofdramione) (true champion and wonderful human) enough for her incredible work beta-ing this story! You are AMAZING! All remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> This is 1 of 8 interconnected stories of Camp Pigwidgeon in the summer of 1988. Read the rest [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/rare_pair_spring_fling_2020/works/).

**Week 1, Day 0 - Saturday**

The sun beat lazily on Hermione’s left arm as she threaded her aging Volkswagen Rabbit through the forest. A warm, pine-scented breeze wafted through the open car windows. Her exchange program in Bulgaria had been incredible — informative, edifying, and (certainly in regards to one Viktor Krum) mind-opening — but she was _home_ now. 

It was finally here. 

The last summer of camp. 

Hermione knew it from the moment she turned off of the narrow two-lane highway and onto the familiar gravel drive that led to Camp Pigwidgeon.

It was going to be a summer to remember.

Once she parked, Hermione prised open the rusty hatchback door, revealing all of her earthly possessions, meticulously Tetrised into place. In order to avoid a six-hour detour for a second stop at her family’s lonely storage unit, everything that was coming to Columbia with her in the fall was here with her now. She carefully extracted her duffel bag, her gear, and a book-laden NPR tote. Pausing, she lifted the lid of an artfully packed cardboard box. She stroked the spine of her 1987-1988 scrapbook, then tugged it out and slid it into the tote. After a moment of hesitation, she grabbed 1986-1987 too. 

Hermione’s first mission, after slinging her stuff onto a low bunk in the counselor cabin, was to find Percy and present him with the clipboard and binder she had prepared. Her duties as Head Counselor were critical, after all, and there was a lot to be done before campers arrived tomorrow. Then she took a brisk stroll to reacquaint herself with the grounds before Orientation, as though she didn’t already know them like the back of her hand. 

In most ways, the immediate reality of Camp Pigwidgeon was exactly what it had always been and exactly what she’d expected it to be: the girls’ counselor cabin, even at its cleanest, smelled of either feet or Fritos, depending on who you asked. Harry and Ron rushed over to meet her outside the Lodge, sweeping her into warm, brotherly hugs. The air was humid. The mosquitos were hungry. The trees were poetic and the facilities mediocre. The uniforms, universally unflattering. The Counselor Welcome Meal consisted of dubious hot dogs and off-brand potato chips, finished off with a slice of sallow honeydew. 

After dinner, the three of them dangled their feet off the swimming dock in companionable silence, admiring a sunset whose only crime was the way it glinted blindingly off of the overly-proud mid-century modern planes of the Malfoy lake house. 

All of the elements of camp were there, all of the things that Hermione, since age eleven, had at first begrudgingly accepted then eventually, through years of repeated exposure, come to actively love. 

And yet, sitting there with Harry and Ron, she found herself trying to swallow a hollow feeling that was lodged just below her breastbone. A sense of dislocation had dogged her this past year, and what had once been firmly anchored within her was now driftless. She found herself unmoored from some deeper sense of self.

She had hoped she might reunite with it here, find it balled up in the bottom of her sleeping bag or waiting for her in the smooth skipping stones along the banks of Black Lake. Perhaps it had been sleeping, latent in the warm embrace of a critical mass of Weasleys, who were as much her family, really, as anyone else. 

She even searched for it on the darkening path from the dock to her cabin, swinging her flashlight in a listless arc. 

So far, it remained elusive. 

Still, Hermione was determined to make this summer count. As the girls’ counselor cabin was swept up in a laughing, giddy frenzy of girls she had never really known how to talk to, most of whom were busy dolling themselves up for some hedonistic _rager_ at the auxiliary property across the lake, Hermione frowned into her clipboard. Making liberal use of her favorite mechanical pencil, she identified and streamlined a five-point plan for improving tomorrow’s camper check-in protocol. 

Her efforts went faster after everyone left her alone with her checklists and strategies, and she felt pleased with her work. This was her contribution, after all, her way to leave her mark. The more smoothly camp ran, the more everyone could enjoy it. The more everyone enjoyed it, the better the summer would be. 

Her last summer at camp. The best summer ever. A summer worth remembering. 

Hermione turned off the light. Sleep eluded her, so she blinked up at the plywood bottom of the bunk above her, determined not to think about her parents an ocean away or the sold sign on her childhood home or the waiting streets of the Upper West Side, filled with indifferent strangers. 

Indistinct but joyous whooping echoed gently from across the lake. She sighed. Her lifelong friends, who were probably over there chugging sweaty beers and trying to rub up against townies, were slowly becoming strangers of another kind. 

She added them to the list of things not to think about and closed her eyes. 

* * *

**Week 1, Day 1 - Sunday**

As predicted, Hermione’s check-in protocol was a success. The campers were all settled in, and the loud, joyful chaos of the kids cheered her up, even if her Lion cabin campers regarded her warily. She’d expected it, anyway; her reputation as a stickler preceded her. 

Ginny caught her on the path back to the dorms after lights out and slung an arm through hers jauntily, immediately launching into a spot-on impression of Ernie McMillan. 

“I’m an _Eagle Scout_ , you see,” she began in a deep, pompous voice, puffing up her chest, “which is why _I’m_ uniquely _qualified_ to lead the _Adventure Expeditions_!” She pointed her nose first to one side, then to the other, like a collie dog, and the gesture was so unmistakably Ernie that Hermione was doubled over laughing all the way back to the counselor cabin. When they got to the screen door, Ginny breezed right in with her. 

“Why are you even in here?” Daphne glanced up, sounding bored. “Aren’t you still a CIT?”

“Lay off.” Ginny plopped down on Hermione’s bunk with a flourish, sucking on her blueberry Tootsie Pop. “I haven’t seen Hermione in like ten months so I have to catch her up on my plans to get laid this summer.” 

“Oooooh, I want to know!” Lavender chimed in brightly from where she was lounging on the floor, slowly working one half of her dark blonde hair into an intricate braid. 

“I just don’t see why it all has to be about _getting laid.”_ Hermione furrowed her brow.

Ginny scoffed, grinning. “Oh, come on, don’t act like you didn’t sleep with your hot older Bulgarian soccer star boyfriend.”  
  
“Hermione dated a soccer star!?” Lavender had the irritating habit of talking about her as though she weren’t in the room. 

“He’s a very talented and dedicated university player, not a _star,_ and he’s actually a very smart and kind _individual,_ in case anyone was wondering.” Hermione was trying to roll her eyes less often, because she recognized that it was a petulant and immature habit, but how could she honestly be expected not to when people were so consistently _frustrating?_

“Anyway, he’s my _ex-boyfriend,_ not my boyfriend.” It was an important clarification, after all.

“And of course I slept with him,” she snapped, “but that doesn’t make sex the _most important thing._ I mean, this is our _last year at camp.”_ _  
_  
_“Your_ last year at camp, _my_ last chance to seduce Harry into a torrid summer romance.” Ginny arched a brow.   
  
“Ew. Harry’s like my brother. I don’t want to think about him. . . _in flagrante delicto._ And no offense, Gin, but I don’t think he likes you like that.”  
  
Ginny stuck out her tongue. _“In flagrante,_ who says that?! And who else am I supposed to date around here?”

Lavender perked up immediately. “Oh, I know! Draco! He’s kind of hot, like, in a mean way.”  
  
“Eh.” Daphne shrugged noncommittally, barely looking up from her Murakami novel. 

“Oh right. Aren’t you like — betrothed to him or something?” Lavender wrinkled her nose.

Daphne groaned. “No, our parents are just delusional. It’s nothing like that. It’s just. . .” She paused, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “You aren’t really his type.”

From where she was sitting on her bunk with a couple of untouched magazines laid out before her, Pansy snorted but did not deign to contribute further.

“Look,” Ginny said, “just because I’m not rich doesn’t mean I don’t have plenty to offer.” She waggled her brows. Hermione sniffed and started refolding and reorganizing all of the clothing she’d just unpacked last night. 

“You know who’s shockingly hot this year?” Lavender paused dramatically, peering around at them, but no one ventured a guess. “Neville Longbottom.” This with salacious reverence, exactly the same tone she used to read out the results of Cosmo sex quizzes. She groped around her Caboodle before emerging with a hair tie.

Pansy stiffened ever so slightly. 

Something within Hermione began to swell with righteous indignation as Lavender went on about Neville’s shorts to a largely indifferent audience. Ginny began to discuss things she had heard about Blaise Zabini’s genitals, but Hermione tuned it out; she was busy forming her argument. 

“You know what?” Hermione burst out all at once, gesticulating wildly with a pair of sad gray cotton undies. “I mean, I believe in sexual liberation as much as the next person. But camp is about so much _more_ than supposedly attractive guys who probably don’t even know how to effectively bring you to climax. I mean, it’s insulting, really, to reduce it to that.” 

Hermione looked up to see a room full of glazed expressions. She went in for the kill. 

“Camp is about _community,_ it’s about the _friendships we’ve forged.”_ She gave the high-cut briefs a vigorous shake for emphasis. “Camp is about embracing challenge as a means to _personal growth._ Think about how far we’ve come, as individual people, as a group of _young women supporting each other,_ since we first came to camp. And this is _it!_ This is our last chance to _make memories._ It is a summer of _initiation_ into adulthood, and we should _cherish it.”_

It was Hermione’s battle cry, and she expected her troops to rally around her, rising with one unified voice. Met instead with bored silence, she surveyed the other girls skeptically. 

Pansy had one hand in her hair and was staring vacantly into space. Millie was quiet, but that was nothing new, and Cho was unaccounted for. On the other side of the cabin, Daphne was still reading her book, while Padma was lying flat on her back with her pillow over her head. Hermione registered Fleur for the first time, filing her nails with palpable indifference. Lavender had moved on to painting her toenails an extremely on-the-nose shade of pastel purple. 

Ginny had propped her chin on her hand and was staring at Hermione with arched brows, casting her a look that very clearly meant, _Are you done yet?_

No one seemed very moved. No one really seemed to be listening at all. 

Cowards, that’s what they were. And possibly bad feminists. 

Ginny shot her a sly grin. “So did _Viktor_ know how to _effectively bring you to climax?”_ She made air quotes and everything. 

Hermione blew out a resigned breath. “Of course he did.” She shook her head, amused against her better judgment. “Now get out of here!” She grinned and cuffed Ginny playfully on the shoulder. “And you know I love you, but for the love of God please don’t make everything weird by trying to sleep with Harry.”

“Fine,” Ginny grumbled around a smile. “I _am_ glad you’re back, though, even if you’re no fun whatsoever.” She gave Hermione a huge hug and then breezed out the back door, but not before liberally distributing Tootsie Pops to the rest of the counselors. Hermione rubbed the bridge of her nose, knowing she’d have to watch Lavender demonstrate blow job techniques on lollipops for the next seven weeks. 

Not exactly the kind of memories she’d had in mind.  
  


* * *

**Week 1, Day 6 - Friday**

Week 1 passed in a fever of routines and rules and safety demonstrations, bringing with it the first swims and s’mores and sunburns of the summer. Hermione reveled in the familiar satisfaction of the first Finger Food Friday at the Canteen.

“So they just sent him home? Who’s going to do his job?” Harry asked around a mouthful of chicken nugget. 

On Monday, Ernie McMillan had gone to the Infirmary with what Nurse Pomfrey had first diagnosed as a lingering cold, then had suspected might possibly be strep throat, before he had finally been sent back to New Hampshire earlier that afternoon with a confirmed case of mononucleosis. 

Ron shrugged as he casually demolished a mozzarella stick. “Dunno. Mom will probably try to rope Charlie into it, but there’s no way he’ll leave that alligator job for this. He hasn’t done camp stuff in like, years.”

Hermione, who had been taking contemplative bites of a mediocre french fry dipped in Hidden Valley Ranch, froze in place with her fry held aloft. She was flooded by a memory of Charlie patiently teaching her about bullfrog tadpoles at the pond outside the Burrow.

Ron waved his hand in front of her face and wrinkled his nose. “Why do you always get weird whenever anyone mentions Charlie?” 

“I do _not_ get _weird!”_ Hermione fired off a medium-strength glare in Ron’s direction. 

Ron and Harry exchanged a meaningful look, a look that she was on the outside of and therefore hated. Under the table, she aimed a kick at Ron’s shin and narrowly missed. 

“Right, because all of this is very normal.” He gestured vaguely at her still extended french fry, dripping ranch onto her sickly yellow cafeteria tray. She narrowed her eyes at him and took a defiant bite.

Harry raked a hand through his messy hair. “Um, Hermione, do you think you could. . . uh, maybe just let us have the fire tonight? After all, it _is_ the weekend. . .” 

On Tuesday and Thursday nights, a few hours after lights out, Hermione had stomped down to the illicit counselor campfire on the near margins of the woods with her enormous high-beam flashlight and threatened to bring down the iron fist of the law (AKA Percy) until her co-workers reluctantly doused the fire and scattered. It did not do her existing reputation as a narc any favors, but that couldn’t be helped. 

Hermione sighed. “Most of us still _work_ tomorrow, Harry. And if I can hear it from my cabin, then impressionable young _campers_ are certainly being kept up by all the _carousing.”_

Shutting the nightly counselor party down was the right thing to do, and it certainly had _nothing_ to do with her reverse culture shock, her anxious insomnia, or her gnawing loneliness. She stabbed a fork into a chicken nugget, an amorphous act of protest intended to underscore her point. 

“But if we’re _quiet._ . .” Harry pushed up his ridiculous, broken glasses. Surely Sirius could afford to buy him new ones, but somewhere along the way, the strip of tape had become an integral part of his personal identity. He leveled his green eyes at her in a puppy dog plea, which was unfair. He _knew_ that always worked on her. 

“Okay, fine.” She raised her hands in surrender. _“If_ I can’t hear you tonight, I won’t bother you. But if I _do_ hear you, no promises.” 

Harry and Ron high-fived in triumph. 

“Fried mac and cheese wedges are the best thing this kitchen makes, hands down,” Ron mumbled around an over-large golden triangle. Hermione side-eyed the suspect wedge with open disdain. 

“Is Malfoy gone _again?”_ Harry asked, glancing around suspiciously. “I don’t know what he’s up to, but I _know_ it can’t be good.” 

Hermione sighed, having heard enough nefarious Malfoy theories for one lifetime. “Look, Harry, Malfoy may be a rich asshole, but I don’t really think there’s anything more to it than that. He’s just allergic to work and privileged enough to get away with it.” 

“What’s he _doing,_ though?” 

Hermione shrugged. “Probably sneering at caddies at the _Club_ or something. Who even _cares?”_

“Hey!” Ron jabbed the remains of the mac and cheese wedge at her in good-natured objection. “Don’t bring golf into this! Golf never did anything to you.” He launched into a monologue on the many techniques Oliver was teaching him to improve his swing, and Hermione zoned out, losing herself to the ambient din of the dining hall. 

So the first week of camp had been decent enough, if fairly predictable. Maybe a certain amount of the old magic was missing, but these things had an ebb and flow. And one of the best things about lifelong friends was that it was safe to be bored together. Right?

Right. 

Yes, it was going to be a perfectly fine summer. Totally adequate. Definitely one to look back on. 

* * *

**Week 2, Day 4 - Wednesday**

Hermione was striding from Aquatics to the Canteen with her trusty clipboard in hand when she glimpsed some kind of commotion on the south edge of the lawn, near the parking lot. 

“Do you know what’s going on?” she called over her shoulder to Pansy, who was still straightening up the life jackets before heading up for dinner. 

Pansy shrugged and popped her gum. “Something about another Weasley?”

She changed course and headed over to investigate. Ginny caught up with her at the edge of the lawn. 

“Hermione! Guess what? Charlie’s here!”

“What?” Hermione could feel her heart beating in her throat. “Charlie?! Really?” 

“Yeah, Mom managed to get through to him in Florida when Ernie went home sick, but he didn’t think he was going to be able to make it back. But now he’s here, apparently!” 

As they walked south, Hermione could make out the dense, sturdy frame of Charlie Weasley high-fiving Oliver Wood. Ginny broke into a run.

Hermione didn’t run unless she was being chased, but she _did_ begin to power walk, worrying her lips with her teeth as she watched Ginny fly into her big brother’s arms. She was happy for Ginny — really, she was — but Charlie was _not_ supposed to be here this summer. His very presence threatened to throw off all of her careful calibrations. 

“Hey!” Charlie cried, wrapping his arms around her. “My favorite sister!” 

“Still not funny.” Ginny stuck out her tongue, but she looked exceedingly pleased. Charlie responded by clapping her on the shoulder and giving her a very gentle and affectionate noogie. She extracted herself, shrieking happily, and smacked him on the arm.

Hermione had finally reached them and was perched there hesitantly when Charlie looked up at her. “Well, if it isn’t Granger!” he said amiably, grabbing her free hand and pulling her into a slightly awkward one-armed hug that involved some unexpected back-patting. He smelled a little bit sweaty, but not in a bad way: more in a wholesome, masculine way that somehow suggested cedar trees and hearty manual labor. Like maybe he had chopped a cord of firewood since his last coat of Old Spice. He stepped back and regarded her fondly. “It’s been, what —?”

“Three years and six months.” Hermione answered easily with what she immediately recognized as far too much precision. Heat rose in her face and she willed herself not to bite her thumb. 

“Of course!” Charlie beamed at her. “Christmas, my first year out of college.” 

Neville bounded up and shook his hand, and she got a good look at Charlie for the first time since he’d arrived. His red hair curled around his ears and chin in wavy tendrils that glinted golden orange in the sloping afternoon light. He’d wrapped a folded paisley bandana across his forehead to keep his hair out of his face. His kind eyes and devastating dimples were the same as ever, but he looked far older now and quite a bit wilder, all broad chest and defined jawline and gloriously red stubble. His freckles were so dense and sun-dappled on his face and collarbones that they had almost merged into a tan. 

Somewhere along the way, Charlie had become a full-grown man, which filled Hermione, bafflingly, with an inarticulate sense of betrayal. 

He was wearing a flannel lumberjack shirt, open over a plain white tee and rolled up above the elbows. His forearms, muscled to an almost bewildering degree, gave her pause. 

When exactly had Charlie Weasley become the Brawny Man?

A sort of receiving line was forming around Charlie. In the distance, Hermione saw Molly Weasley descending on camp, her kinetic frenzy visible even from several hundred yards away. 

Hermione took one more long look at Charlie then slipped away to the Canteen. 

\--<>\--

Hermione tossed and turned in her bunk that night, trying to tune out the distant din of the counselor campfire wafting through the open window. A laugh here and there, a hush of ambient chatter, much like other nights. Notably: the clarion call of a guitar, faint but ringing out clear and bright and true. 

Hermione had gotten as far as sitting up and wrapping her hand around her MagLite, but something about the melody stirred a profound reluctance within her. 

This wasn’t Justin’s clunking chords or Daphne’s gentle arpeggios. This was someone with real skill, probably someone soulful who had careful, calloused fingers.

She thumped the flashlight in her hand a few times, chewing her lip. It had to be Charlie. 

For once, she didn’t want to be the person that put an end to the campfire. Not only would it inspire mutiny amongst the other counselors, it didn’t feel right this time. 

Sighing, she set the flashlight down and crawled back into her bunk. An incandescent sliver of light stretched from the outdoor bathrooms to the wall next to her pillow. She traced her fingers over her illuminated name: _Hermione Jean Granger 1988,_ spelled out carefully in Sharpie, just below _Katie Bell 1987_. She’d had her misgivings, but it didn’t _really_ count as vandalism when it was also a time-honored tradition. 

_I was here_ , she thought absently, which awakened some melancholy ache that she could not begin to understand. A new song had started up; she was pretty sure it was “Helpless.” If she strained her ears, she could hear what _might_ be the faded whisper of his voice.

Rolling over and tugging a pillow over her face, she silently berated herself for this particular weakness before finally drifting off to the distant strains of Charlie’s guitar. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm so excited to FINALLY share this story with you (COMPLETE, with all 6 chapters posted!), and I'd love to know what you think! 
> 
> Almost all of my notes are about songs, so buckle up. 😂
> 
> The song Hermione faintly hears Charlie playing is "Helpless" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. 
> 
> Now, let the Charmione begin in earnest! Onward!


	2. Chapter 2

**Week 2, Day 5 - Thursday**

On the eastern edge of the area around the girls’ cabins, an old silver maple sprawled its languid limbs out, offering ample shade. Hermione’s entire plan for the day was to lay a blanket out under her favorite tree and catch up on her reading. 

“Hey, Hermione!”

She squinted and made out a figure, barely, where the woods started to thicken. Moving towards it, she found a narrow trail that hadn’t been there last year. 

In a small clearing, a tiny cabin that she had never seen before in her life seemed to have sprouted up from the earth. In front of it, Charlie stood, sweaty and shirtless, beside a substantial pile of freshly chopped firewood, wielding an axe. 

It was a jarring turn of events, but Charlie just flashed her an easy smile, as though they had casual, semi-clothed chats every day while he split logs. As the daughter of dentists, she couldn't help but notice that he really did have excellent teeth. 

“You disappeared on me yesterday, Granger.” He sank the axe into the chopping block and leaned against it, catching his breath. A red and black dragon tattoo wound its way up his right side, its tail twisting towards Charlie’s hip, dipping beneath his waistband.

“You had a crowd of admirers.” Hermione smiled tentatively and adjusted the shoulder strap of her tote. “I didn’t want to intrude.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s been an age! I want to hear about Bulgaria!” He was all good cheer and sparkling eyes.  
  
She squinted dubiously at the cabin. “Was this here before?” 

“I built it last fall!”

Her eyes went wide. “You built it _yourself?”_

“Yup. Needed a place to crash in the off-season.”

“Aren’t there _permits?”_ Though it was a very cute cabin; its rough pine almost glowed. Charming. _Rustic._

Charlie laughed. “You sound like Percy.” 

He gave her a once-over, seeming to notice her striped tank top and denim shorts. Civilian clothes. “Hey, aren’t you working today?”

“I have Thursdays off. I was just going to go read —”

“Listen, I don’t officially start until tomorrow. Let’s catch up! Meet me at the dock in ten?”

She thought about the much-anticipated volume on international geopolitics weighing down her bag. That was how she was _supposed_ to want to spend her day. 

There was such a hopeful glint in his eyes, though, that she could not find it in herself to say no. “Yeah, okay.” 

He aimed enthusiastic double finger guns at her, then hefted the axe back onto his shoulder as she walked away. 

\--<>\--

“Captain or stoker?” Charlie gestured to their vessel with a playful flourish.

“Captain.” Hermione clambered into the back of the boat with total authority. 

“Aye aye!” He saluted her with a goofy smile, then hopped in front lightly, and they set off. 

Black Lake must have known it was July. The water was indulgently, excessively blue, all gleaming, rippling sapphire framed by the deepest greens. The shoreline on the horizon rippled with the heat of high summer. She could just see the top of the old hemlock on the Island brushing against the storybook sky. The waves from their own oar strokes lapped against the canoe in a pleasing rhythm. 

They worked well together, seamlessly, wordlessly. Charlie started singing an old camp canoe song, and she sang along under her breath.

When they reached the old, semi-abandoned camp on the other side, Charlie settled himself on a fallen tree facing the lake and started skipping stones. Hermione joined in, and they spoke in low tones about the past few years, about her time abroad and his most recent herpetology projects. 

They talked about the summer’s Adventure Expeditions: “It’s so sexist,” Hermione argued, “that they’re boys only!”

She told him about Columbia and it was a toss-up between Poli Sci and International Relations, and he told her about the resort job he had lined up for this winter in Colorado, where he could snowboard for free. 

Even though it had been years since they’d caught up, talking to him still felt _easy._ Everything about Charlie was easy, effortless, so being around him was always easy too. _Too_ easy, really. 

In Hermione’s life there were long lists of what was and wasn’t allowed, carefully generated and policed for maximum control over future outcome. Everything about the comprehensive ease of Charlie Weasley fell into the unallowed column. Always had and always would. 

Feeling his eyes on her, she turned. 

He was watching her, his face soft and pensive. “So who are you dating these days, Granger?” 

The loose bark on the log underneath her rustled as she shifted. She skipped a rock into the lake and cursed her traitorous heart, knocking against her ribs. What the fuck was this question? 

“Not my little brother?”

“Ron?” She grimaced. “Ew, no.” 

“Okay, who is it then?” Charlie grinned. 

“Actually.” She swallowed. “I’m not seeing anyone right now.” It was flattering, really, how surprised he looked. “I had a boyfriend in Bulgaria, and he was great. . . but I was coming home. . . and, well, it just felt like a natural ending point anyway. I don’t know that we would have worked, long term.” Why was she spilling the secrets of her love life to Charlie on a stretch of neglected lakeshore?

“Besides,” she went on even though she was resolved not to. Maybe it was the way he was making meaningful eye contact and nodding, like every word she said was resonant. “I don’t think I want to be tied down right now. I want to try new things. Explore.” She shrugged. “Maybe see the world, a bit.” 

“My oh my, has _Hermione Granger_ become a free spirit?” His mouth quirked up, and his eyes were impish. “Have I _converted_ you?” 

“Shut up! I have _not!”_ She punched him lightly on his stupid Brawny Man arm, not as an excuse to touch it, of course, but because he was being impossible. 

He grabbed her wrist, and at first it was playful; they were laughing. Then, without her permission, something _shifted._ He was gazing right into her like she had hung the moon, rubbing his rough thumb gently over her wrist, which was still caught in his grasp.

“I’m single too.” 

He didn’t look away. 

His words hung in the air. 

Time swayed. 

“Oh.” She went rigid, bewildered, and he must have seen it on her face because he released her wrist immediately. He cleared the air with a joke about frogs, as though they had not just been transported into an alternate dimension where they cast each other longing looks on secluded shorelines and maybe possibly almost kissed. 

Was that really what had just happened? 

Surely not. 

She watched his enormous hand as he flicked his perfect wrist and sent another speckled gray stone skipping six times out into the deep. 

They rowed home in silence, but it wasn’t awkward silence. It was — still, somehow, against all odds — beautiful, companionable silence.

She hated every single minute of it.

* * *

**Week 2, Day 7 - Saturday**

There must have been a party somewhere else that night because, though she strained to hear it, there was no laughter from the woods and absolutely no guitar. 

She sat up in her bunk with her scrapbooks, clutching the security blanket of the past. The pages were full of pictures of her and Ron and Harry laughing, and maybe they hadn’t ever had all that much in common, but they used to have _fun._

This summer was supposed to be the last summer that was the _same_ before everything changed. But everything had changed, before it was supposed to, in ways that she had not predicted. She could not shake the feeling that she _could_ have made it all come out different, that she _should_ have predicted it. 

A part of her knew that she was the variable. Camp this year _was_ the same. _She,_ however, had been irrevocably transmuted, in ways that still felt dangerous and unknown. 

But another part of her preferred to believe that Charlie Weasley and his dragon tattoo were sabotaging all of her plans. 

After all, Charlie was another dangerous and unknown variable. Absent from the past few years of camp and Weasley family holidays, yes, but also _different._ Still happy-go-lucky, universally beloved, but now with something fierce and ragged rippling through him like a vein through marble.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more sure she was that Charlie was the problem. And that’s what she was thinking about, the _problem_ of it all, and not what the tail of the dragon tattoo must look like where it wound down over his naked hipbone. 

* * *

**Week 3, Day 2 - Monday**

Okay, fine, it was true — Hermione had been on the verge of renewing the subscription to her ridiculous childhood crush on Charlie Weasley. But that was _before_ everyone had started ranting and raving about how great he was. 

It was lucky, really, that no one would shut up about him, because now she could see that he was _clearly_ overrated. He had only been at camp _five days_ before she was fed up. 

At breakfast, Justin Finch-Fletchley held her captive at the dish return station for five whole minutes. While he sprayed down her plate, he extolled the virtues of Charlie’s guitar-playing skills and his knowledge of Led Zeppelin’s catalog.

During morning activities, she’d noticed that Neville had tied a bandana around his forehead. _Honestly._

At lunch, Romilda Vane and her posse of CITs had clustered around Charlie, giggling every time he opened his mouth. Their ineffectual fawning was so nauseating that she’d cleared half of her lunch directly into the scrap bin. 

Now afternoon games were in full-swing, the lawn besieged by a camp-wide game of squirrel tag. 

“I just don’t see what all the fuss is about.” Hermione stood stiffly with her clipboard, watching as children darted in all directions, grasping at the brightly colored flags Velcroed to each other’s belts. The counselors had all staked out vigilant posts along the sidelines. 

“Oh, come _on_ , Hermione,” Lavender wheedled. “Just look at him.” 

About 100 feet away on the grass, Charlie Weasley was performing rigorous push-ups with a young camper clinging to his shining, shirtless back. 

Hermione rolled her eyes. “It’s a bit much, though, don’t you think?” As she watched in helpless fascination, Charlie defied the limits of both physical capability and human decency by clapping his hands mid-push-up. The kid on his back shrieked joyously. 

“It’s just enough!” Lavender pretended to fan herself. “He’s not who I’m going for this summer—” Her voice was tinged with only a little regret. Even though Hermione loved Neville, she was glad that he was on lifeguard duty so that she did not have to watch his ineffectual attempts at fending off Lavender. “—But you _have_ to admit that Charlie is, like, undeniably hot.”

Hermione looked around for help, but it was not forthcoming. Fleur shrugged dispassionately. “He’s definitely handsome.” 

Cho played with the tie of her camp tee and squinted across the lawn. “Yeah, sure. . .” She cocked her head to one side, appraising him. “Okay, he’s pretty cute!”

“Fine. He’s not _unattractive.”_ Hermione put her hands on her hips.

“Hermione.” Daphne shot Hermione a shit-eating grin. “Even I can admit that he’s hot.”

“Why would you be different than any of the rest of us?” Hermione asked, raising one hand to shield the sun from her eyes. 

Daphne just raised her brows and pressed her lips together, clearly amused, and shot Pansy a look of some significance. Padma looked to the side and rubbed her nose. 

Cormac had jumped into the game and streaked past them with a wild holler, hotly trailed by seven whooping campers.

Hermione turned desperately to Pansy, who didn’t say anything at all. 

“Anyway, he’s _annoyingly_ cheerful,” Hermione continued stubbornly. 

Daphne shrugged. Normally she held the monopoly on criticizing good attitudes. “It seems genuine. Say what you want to, but he’s not fake.” 

“That’s true,” Padma said. “He’s really nice to everyone, and you can tell he actually means it.” 

“Super nice!” Lavender nodded vigorously. “And he’s _really_ good with the kids!"

Ginny came jogging over from where she had been helping a camper tend to a minor battle wound. 

“Gin!” Hermione’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Tell them that your brother’s not that great!”

“Ron?” Ginny wrinkled her nose. “Everyone already knows that.”

Hermione snorted. “Hey, Ron’s not that bad. But, no! Charlie!”

“Are you kidding?” Ginny was jogging in place, presumably for the fun of it. Hermione could not see the appeal. “Charlie’s the best!” 

Lavender raised a fist in triumph. Daphne cackled. Even Padma, who was usually quiet about these things, smiled. 

“Well, at least tell them that he isn’t that hot!”

“Well, I’m definitely not going to call my brother _hot_ , but what can I say, Hermione?” Ginny shot her a comically exaggerated wink. “Us Weasleys are a good-looking bunch!” She jogged away, laughing.

Lavender grinned and bopped from side to side expectantly, waiting for her concession. 

Hermione kicked futilely at a clump of sod. “Fine.” She huffed out a sigh. “He’s conventionally attractive in the sense that his face is fairly symmetrical and that’s as much as I’m going to give you. I still think he’s overrated, though.” 

Giggling, Lavender reached out and shook her hand. “I’ll take it!” 

“Hang on.” Hermione surveyed the lawn from east to west, counting counselors on her fingers. “Not _again.”_ She rubbed the bridge of her nose and shook her head, then turned to the girls around her. “Does anyone know where Draco is?”

“Beats me.” Daphne shrugged. 

* * *

**Week 3, Day 5 - Thursday**

Charlie turned back on the trail and handed her a frond of maidenhair fern. Its delicate fingers waved in the breeze.

“What’s this for?”

He scratched his bronzed neck, ruffling his own copper curls, perpetually jovial. “For your scrapbook, H.”

She could have been back at camp. She had spread out her red and white checked blanket under the maple. She had already taken out her copy of Beloved. She could have been having a perfect day off by herself in the dappled shade. 

But she was weak in ways she preferred not to examine, so she found herself following Charlie up a switchbacked national forest trail to the mouth of a spring she had never seen before. Somehow, he had gotten Thursdays off, too, even though Tuesday had been Ernie’s assigned day. Not that it was something she dwelled on. 

It wasn’t until they rested, dipping their bare feet in a frigid mountain stream, that he finally stopped smiling. “Why’s all your stuff in your car, Hermione?” 

He’d talked her into driving the Rabbit up today; he’d wanted to see how it ran. 

She sighed, chewing on her fingernail. “You heard my parents moved to Australia last year?”

He nodded. His annoyingly friendly face was as comfortable as her favorite pair of worn-in jeans, and it was impossible to keep secrets when he was around.

“We got in a pretty big fight about it. Things are still pretty strained, actually. They wanted me to come with them, but I wanted to do an exchange program like I’d been planning. They left all my stuff in this depressing storage unit. So. . .”

“Oh, H. . .” His voice was a shade too close to pity, and a carefully guarded piece of her broke loose at the sound of it. She swiped at her eyes. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head.

“Do you want to not talk about it. . . together?”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes, and he laid one broad hand between her shoulder blades, letting it rest there, still and heavy. For someone so constantly in motion, he had a surprisingly soothing manner. 

She loathed it. Truly she did. 

As she steered them home over the winding hills, he casually draped his hand over hers on the gearshift, as if it were a natural, everyday thing for him to do. “Hey, can I feel how the Red Rabbit shifts?”

And so she let his hand rest on hers as she shifted up to third and then fourth. It was purely educational. He had a notable interest in mechanics. There was nothing so compelling about his hand over hers as she upshifted. Nothing that could be described as remotely sexy. 

“It’s a good steed, H.” Charlie was always so merry, so bright. A human Christmas tree. 

He squeezed her hand, and she didn’t feel at all like she had swallowed the stars. 

Nope. She didn’t feel any of that at all. 

\--<>\--

That night, she stared at the plywood above her, her restless thoughts now less about her personal existential crisis and more about how much she hated Charlie’s bulging biceps. They _represented,_ they really did, a kind of unrealistic and potentially _damaging_ hyper-masculine ideal that she simply couldn’t endorse.

It was fine if other people were attracted to it, she acknowledged grudgingly, but _she_ preferred brains over brawn. Her type was more lanky philosophers. College Democrats whose crisp button-downs hung loosely off of their slight frames. Soft-handed scholars, probably _._

Theoretically, of course. Viktor, with his stony dignity, and his voluptuous calves, and his soccer scholarship, had not exactly fit that bill. But one ex-boyfriend was an inadequate sample size for drawing clear conclusions. 

* * *

**Week 3, Day 7 - Saturday**

For three nights in a row, the guitar kept her up. 

On Thursday, she had paced the boards of the cabin until someone threw a pillow at her. 

On Friday, she had closed the window with finality. In the morning she woke up sweating, and everyone else had whined about how stuffy the room was. 

On Saturday, she worked herself into a fervor about the sanctity of camp. How was she supposed to make memories to last a lifetime if she couldn’t fucking sleep? She’d _tried_ to make an exception for _art,_ but the nightly campfires were getting out of hand, and she simply couldn’t let it stand any longer. Seething with silent rage, she pulled on her jean shorts, shrugged her Columbia sweatshirt over the old tee she slept in, and headed out the door, gripping her MagLite with conviction. 

She tromped into the woods, prepared to demonstrate her full wrath against the Bacchanale. Only when she got there . . .

Hermione glanced around the fire pit, biting her lip. The circle, when she really looked at it, was surprisingly mild. A half-dozen counselors and camp staff were clumped around a small fire, laughing and chatting. Daphne was roasting a marshmallow on a sharpened stick. Someone had dragged over a case of cheap beer, which everyone was drinking lukewarm from the can. Justin Finch-Fletchley, clad in a tri-colored windbreaker, was noodling around with a harmonica. 

Sure, they were drinking. Some of them were definitely going to have sex after this. But Hermione had to acknowledge — though it chafed her — that the overall effect was not entirely _unwholesome._

And then there was Charlie, strumming lazy chords between songs and smiling at her. All of her will to shut the party down, which had been considerable just moments before, dwindled at once. 

Charlie was sitting on a log bench, his guitar golden in the firelight. His already sunny expression brightened when he saw her. “Hey, you finally made it!” He gestured at a stump to his right. “Join us! We don’t bite.” 

Hermione hesitated, hating that she couldn’t see the harm in it. “I guess it couldn’t hurt to stay for one song.” 

Harry came over and clapped her on the shoulder, passing her a lukewarm can of Natural Lite. She regarded it with open suspicion and handed it back to him with a grimace. 

“A woman of taste!” Charlie laughed. “You can share my flask if you want.”

“What’s in it?”

He grinned. “Ogden’s Okay-est,” he answered, which Hermione knew to be Camp Pigwidgeon shorthand for Ogden’s Finest Ohio Bourbon, mediocre at best. Not that she had firsthand knowledge.

He held out a slim silver flask, and Hermione took it. Daphne turned, pursing her lips in interest. Harry smirked at her, friendly but knowing.

Hermione _may,_ on several occasions in the past, have given impassioned speeches about drinking alcohol being against the governing spirit of camp. But, hypocrisy be damned, here she was, so she unscrewed the cap and took an unapologetic slug. 

This whiskey burned going down. Her awareness flickered, gradually grew to encompass the evening breeze on her ear and the warmth of the fire on her cheek, the rough log beneath her. Across the fire, Lavender was laughing a little too loudly with Neville, who looked supremely uncomfortable. 

She watched Charlie’s fingers on the neck of the guitar. He was playing something intricate and pretty, very familiar, his eyes burning right into her. She couldn't help but think that there should be some sort of law against dimples like that.

She swallowed another gulp of the whiskey, but he was still watching her when she looked back up. 

“Hey lady, you’ve got the love I need.” It was easy enough to fall into his eyes, gleaming in the firelight, to lose herself, just a little bit, in his rich tenor. 

When the song hit the drop and Charlie started belting it out, she sank to the ground in front of her stump and leaned back. Straight up above her, the milky way was painted over a dark velvet sky. She gave herself over to the music.

Maybe she had overreacted. 

The counselor campfires were probably harmless. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Charlie sings at the campfire is "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Led Zeppelin.


	3. Chapter 3

**Week 4, Day 5 - Thursday**

Charlie came around, trying to tempt her out on an adventure. Hermione politely declined and he wandered off, whistling something upbeat. _Finally_ blissfully alone, she opened a book, then closed it again. She tried another with the same results. Giving up, she watched as the light moved yellow-green through the gently stirring leaves.

She spent fifteen minutes studying the fern frond she had pressed in an otherwise unopened text on geopolitics. 

It was bad enough that he haunted her nights. He simply wasn’t _allowed_ to haunt her days. 

* * *

**Week 4, Day 7 - Saturday**

“Good news, H!” Charlie plopped down next to her in the Canteen. “You know how you were saying the Adventure Expeditions should be open to girls?”

“Well, they _should_ be.” Hermione pushed a pile of pallid peas into what certainly seemed to be instant mashed potatoes. “It’s awfully misogynistic to assume that girls aren’t interested in backpacking.”

Charlie flashed her a wide grin. “I talked to my folks, and starting this year, the trips are going to be open to girls!”

“Wait, what?” Hermione blinked. “They _are?”_

“Yup! Full roll-out next year, partial this year. Any girl who wants can join in on the Week 6 trip. And we” — he waggled his finger guns between the two of them — “are leading the trip!”

She dropped her fork. “ _We?”_

“Of course! Who did you think the girls’ counselor for the trip would be?”

Hermione squinched one eye at him skeptically and groaned. Charlie just sat there _sparkling_ at her, wagging like a puppy with his hand held up expectantly until she relented and gave him a high five.

* * *

**Week 5 - Days Blur**

A sort of sultry torpor settled over Camp Pigwidgeon in late July, and Hermione’s days lost their hard edges.

She spent more nights than not down at the campfire, watching Charlie’s fingers as he coaxed songs from his guitar. Sharing a flask, sometimes. Listening as he explained to his acolytes why he strung his guitar the standard way even though he was left-handed or told another harrowing tale about his rock climbing escapades in Yosemite. 

“Hermione won’t like this one,” he said with a grin.

“Well, excuse _me_ for not wanting you to _die.”_ She scoffed even as she leaned into him, just slightly. Because it was easier not to think, drunk on woodsmoke and the occasional shooting star and possibly a very moderate amount of Ogden’s. Easier to let the line of her thigh push gently into the line of his and to let his thigh push back.

Hermione Granger had exactly two modes — overthinking or thinking not at all. 

So the week passed in a smudgy montage of coconut suntan lotion and long swims, Canteen hot dogs and sun-drenched lawn games. The kids were ready to go home and the counselors were exhausted, but Hermione felt like she had finally _arrived_ , like she inhabited her own body again. 

On Thursday, Charlie drove them to town. He bought her lunch at the burger stand. He tolerated, perhaps even enjoyed, the hour she insisted on spending in the cramped bookstore, where he stretched his shins in front of the box fan while examining field guides.

They drove back in contented silence. The world, saturated with light and observed through a dusty windshield, looked exactly how it felt.

“H.” Charlie cast her a sly, sideways glance through the amber gradient of his aviators. “Want to see how Old Blue shifts?”

Hermione didn’t care how Charlie’s truck shifted and Charlie knew it, but she laid her clammy hand over his anyway. A recklessness was unfurling in some dark pit of her heart. 

He shifted his hand so that it rested on top of hers, so that she felt both the shaky vibration of the throttle below and the warm weight of his hand above. Their hands flexed together, relaxed, then flexed again as he guided them gently down, up, over, up, down, down. She felt, for just a moment, like they were one animal. Back up, then up again. Back down, floating in neutral as they coasted down a hill. 

“So.” Charlie’s voice was rough around the edges. “What do you think?”

A low unguarded laugh broke out of her throat. She extracted her hand from under his and set it on top again. “You know it doesn’t mean anything to me.” She meant Old Blue’s transmission, which was an obscure mystery to her, but something about her words rang false.

They’d reached camp, and Charlie pulled the car into park. He gave her a long look of assessment, like she was a riddle that he wanted badly to solve. “Doesn’t it?” There was a challenge in his eyes and she didn’t want to think about what it meant. 

She did not know what to say, so she just squeezed his hand, then let it go. 

* * *

**Week 6, Day 3 - Tuesday**

Hermione held a hand to her eyes and warily surveyed Black Lake, grimacing at the dark clouds brooding on the eastern horizon. 

The twelve and thirteen-year-old boys, as well as the three girls who had wanted to join the Adventure Expedition, were strapping themselves into life jackets and loading their gear into canoes under Charlie’s consultation. 

“What do you think?” She jerked her head towards the distant storm, wrinkling her nose.

Charlie paused his happy whistling and considered the clouds. “Not ideal. But it’s not raining at all yet, and there’s not much wind. We should be able to make it across before the storm reaches us. And that’s what makes it an adventure!”

“That’s what makes it suck butt,” Josh grumbled, softly enough for plausible deniability, but loudly enough that Charlie shot him a look. 

Hermione, unenthused and inclined towards worst-case scenarios, had a bad feeling about this. But she couldn’t see another way out of it, so she began distributing clear plastic ponchos to all of the kids who didn’t have good raincoats. 

The air was still dry when they pushed off from the dock. The wind began to pick up and a light drizzle fell around the fleet of canoes as they approached the middle of the lake. Hermione eyed the black thunderhead that had rolled over them with suspicion. Some of the boats were starting to lag a bit as campers struggled to fight the gale. 

All at once, the sky opened up. 

“Change of plan!” Charlie shouted over the driving rain. “We’re going to the Island instead!”

“What!?” she cried out, bewildered. Even though she immediately understood why Charlie had made the call, her brain froze in panic every time a plan — a good, sound, predictable plan — was upended. 

To get to the Island from where they were, they had to turn into the wind. Charlie paddled hard, maneuvering his boat to the front of the pack, shouting for everyone to follow him. “When I say go, row hard on the left!” As soon as they were within the windbreak of the Island, his boat cut sharply to the right. “GO!” 

Behind him, a trail of wobbly, weaving red canoes began struggling towards the Island against a bitter wind. 

Hermione kept her oar to the left of the canoe she and Josh were in, doing her best to steer it towards safe harbor. “Row hard on the left, Josh!” she called through gritted teeth.

Heavy raindrops sent intersecting circles of fast and frantic ripples echoing out over the skin of the lake. 

Josh dipped his paddle in on the right with a degree of languid apathy that felt both calculated and personal. Hermione began to count to ten to quiet her exasperation with this hapless child, which was definitely disproportionate if not entirely undeserved.

A sudden gust whipped across the dark water, shaking Josh’s cap loose from under his hooded poncho and sending it into the water.

Several things happened almost at once. Josh lunged out to the left, grasping at his lost cap. The canoe, wobbling wildly, began to tip at an alarming angle, sending Hermione’s backpack tumbling from the center toward the water’s surface. Without thinking and against every ounce of her training, Hermione released her oar and grabbed recklessly for her pack, just managing to loop her hand through a strap.

By the time it dawned on her what was about to happen, she was powerless to stop it. 

The boat flipped and all of its contents, including Hermione and Josh, were plunged into Black Lake. 

Somehow, after a brief wrestling and buoyed by her life jacket, she managed to keep the pack mostly above her head. Josh bobbed up like a cork, gasping for breath but ultimately unharmed. 

She watched with resigned hopelessness as the Granger family tent, reliable stalwart of countless backyard sleepovers and national park outings, sunk forever into the murky depths, with Josh’s pack close behind it. 

“Squid food!” For all of Josh’s difficult qualities, his attitude always improved when he was in the midst of chaos. He was squished up like a soggy sandwich in layers of wet camp shirt and cheap plastic poncho and orange life jacket, but he looked like he was having the time of his life.

She wanted to be mad, she really did, but instead she found herself biting back a laugh as they clung to the upturned canoe and waited dutifully for rescue. 

Lightning illuminated the sky as Charlie sent the kids on towards the Island and turned his boat back to help them right the canoe.

As soon as the group reached shore, Hermione helped the kids stash their canoes as far out of the rain as possible, face down in a line. A drenching summer storm raged. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Charlie already had some campers setting up tents a bit farther inland. When she herded the rest of the kids to the campsite, Charlie tossed her his tent with a grin. It was army green and one-person. She clicked the poles into place with efficient haste, then stowed as many packs as possible in the vestibule. Meanwhile, Charlie guided the kids through attaching rain flies and keeping the inside of their tents dry as they clambered in and escaped the storm. 

They worked in tandem with wordless synchrony. When she was with Charlie, she didn’t think. She just _did,_ and somehow it all still worked out well. 

She was still drenched, but it was 80 degrees out — she’d live. Where she was going to sleep tonight, though, she wasn’t sure. 

\--<>\--

“We make a good team, H!” They’d done their best to make sure the kids were dry, well-fed, and reasonably entertained through the unending summer storm. Round checks were done, with all of the kids zipped securely in their tents for the night. Warm rain was still pelting down on Charlie’s tent, but it had softened some as the evening set in. She’d done her best to towel dry, but between the rain and the lake she was still soaked to the skin. 

“Let’s get you some dry clothes.” Charlie grinned, unbuttoning his flannel. He tugged off his camp tee and tossed it over to her. He sat before her completely shirtless, his damp red curls springing out around his head. His torso reminded her of nothing so much as David carved from marble, firmly muscled and dappled with dimension in the dim light. He was as densely freckled across his arms and chest as he was across his face, with a slight tan line of freckles where his t-shirt ended. A thicket of coarse, auburn hair trailed down from his navel, thickening at the low-slung waistband of his loose jeans. The tail of the dragon did not bear considering. 

She’d seen him shirtless before, of course, playing ultimate on the lawn and swimming and chopping firewood, but she’d never been quite so close. And she’d never had quite so much trouble looking away. 

Hermione swallowed, catching the t-shirt. It was still warm from clinging to his skin. Charlie had shrugged his flannel back on but left it open. She looked up at him, expectant. 

“Oh,” he said, seeing the problem. “I’m sorry, H — I can’t go out in the rain or we’ll both be like wet dogs all night. But I’ll close my eyes and turn around.” He scrunched his eyes comedically tight and twisted his torso towards the sagging tent wall. 

Hermione also turned, but in the one-person tent she felt sure that his back was only inches from hers. She was certain she could _feel_ him behind her, warm and alive and pulsing with breath. She peeled off her regulation Camp Pigwidgeon ringer neck t-shirt, soaked through. Beneath, her white cotton bra was sodden, sticking to her skin. 

“I’m sorry I don’t have extra pants.” Hermione turned at the sound of his voice; Charlie was still facing the tent wall. “Unless you want tomorrow’s boxers.”

“Uh, that’s okay,” Hermione said, feeling a particular shade of mortification somewhere approximately in her pelvic floor at the idea of wearing Charlie’s boxers with nothing underneath them. “I’ll, uh, make do.”

She wriggled out of her sodden jeans, painfully aware that they were both probably thinking about her wet underwear, then pulled Charlie’s gloriously dry shirt over her head. She paused before sliding her arms through to unclasp and covertly shrug off her bra. His shirt smelled like Irish Spring soap and his clean, sunny sweat smell. She was absolutely not considering burying her face in it. Instead, she pulled it all the way down, smoothing it out. 

“All clear,” she called, a little louder than necessary.

Charlie turned back to her. She was used to his easy confidence, but this sheepish smile was new to her. His ears were a little red. A distant mental alarm bell clattered, so far suppressed that she barely registered it. 

“Uh,” he said, raking a hand through his hair, “about the sleeping bag. . . Are you sure you don’t want to trade? Or. . .?” He gestured helplessly.

“It’s fine,” Hermione said, a little more tersely than she meant to. “Mine’s not that wet.”

Charlie dubiously regarded the floor of the tent, where Hermione had spread out her olive green Coleman bag. Across the interior, a repeating sepia hunter pursued a recurring set of red and brown ducks. Easily a quarter of the bag was fully wet, with another quarter of it quite damp. 

“Okay,” Charlie said. His lips were pressed together in doubt. “But if you change your mind, my bag is pretty roomy.” Everything he said, and the way he said it, was so wholesome, genuine, innocent. And yet. . . 

“I appreciate it,” Hermione said with a thin smile. “But I’ll be fine.” She wriggled into the damp sleeping bag, trying not to think too covetously of Charlie’s completely dry, lightweight 30-degree bag. Hearing his belt buckle, she turned away as he slipped out of his jeans and climbed into his sleeping bag.

“G’night, H,” Charlie said with a smile, snapping off the battery-operated lantern. 

She lay in the dark a moment, listening to his little sounds. A sigh. His breathing. The nylon crinkling as he settled himself into his sleeping bag. Her legs were pressed against heavy, cold, wet cotton, and she flinched away, trying to make herself small. 

“Good night, Charlie.” 

Her heart was hammering in her chest. She had never felt more awake in her life. 

She tried to sleep, she really did. 

But a chill came over her and she couldn’t shake it. She turned to one side and then the other. She rubbed her hands over her arms, for friction. She attempted some creative sleeping bag gymnastics, to minimize her contact with the wet part of the bag. Nothing helped. 

At length, Charlie sat up. He flicked on the lantern and rested a hand lightly on her arm. “Let’s figure this out.” 

“Honestly,” she lied, sitting up, “I’m fine.” 

“Do you have _goosebumps?_ ”He raised a brow in alarm. “Here, I have an idea. Get out of that thing.” 

If they didn’t do _something,_ she’d keep them both up all night, so Hermione obediently scooched out of the sleeping bag and retreated to the far end of the tent. Charlie turned her sleeping bag sideways, spreading the dry half of it out underneath his own bag and crumpling the wet bit up in the corner. He unzipped his own bag halfway, and laid it out over hers with the zipper facing down.

“There,” he said, with an air of confident finality. “We’ll have a bit more room. And you won’t freeze. 

Not seeing any other good option, she climbed in, trying to lean as far to her side as she could. Charlie slipped his feet in next to hers, and his bare legs brushed hers. He kept his torso canted as far away from her as he could manage. 

Hermione could not figure out why she was breathing heavily. Or why she felt a certain knot twisting deep in her belly. Or why her heart was still stammering. 

There was nothing unusual or untoward about being this close to Charlie Weasley, both of them partially undressed in a dark tent. It was a matter of pragmatism, after all. And they were both adults. 

She fidgeted, restless, trying relentlessly to scrunch herself onto a dryer portion of sleeping bag. She could hear his ragged breathing behind her.

“Hermione,” he said, “are you always this antsy?”

“No,” she said apologetically. “I can’t get comfortable. Still a bit cold, I guess.” The fact that she was still wearing freezing wet underwear was between herself and God. 

Charlie laid one tentative hand on her shoulder. “Can I try something?” he asked.

“Okay.” It was barely a whisper.

“My mom used to do this when I couldn’t sleep.” His voice was low and husky and somewhere very close to her ear.

She felt his touch, soft at first, as he began to scratch her back with both hands. 

“Mmmm.” She hadn’t meant to make a noise, but his hands had an unbidden effect on her. She couldn’t tell what was the smell of his t-shirt and what was _him,_ and against her will, she relaxed.

His hands were warm and comforting on her back. The rain had let up. Cicadas sang in the distance. She felt herself on the very edge of drifting off. 

From the heavy silence of the forest, a prepubescent voice came ringing out.

“BUTTS!”

“Joshhhhhh,” Hermione groaned, burying her face in the sleeping bag. She heard the rustling of Charlie pulling on his pants.

“I’ll take care of it,” Charlie said, climbing over her awkwardly. “You sleep.” 

\--<>\--

She must have dozed, because she jolted to awareness as Charlie slipped back into the sleeping bag beside her. 

“You still cold?” he asked. She wanted to be wrapped in the warm wool of his whisper. It had been so nice, when he had been rubbing her back. 

Hermione had a theory that people had different kinds of thoughts, different kinds of conversations, when they were lying down. If she had been sitting up, she never would have said it. 

“Maybe you could help warm me up?” Her voice was small in her throat. She was facing the door of the tent, and he was behind her, so she couldn’t see what his face was doing. 

There was a breath in which he paused. She thought for a moment that he might say something. That he might shatter it all with some kind of discussion or confession. But he didn’t. He only exhaled and said, “Okay.” Then he slid up behind her, winding his arms around her and pulling her close. 

“I _have_ been told that I’m a human furnace.” He was smiling into her neck and if that was not strictly required for helping increase your co-worker’s core temperature, she was not going to dock points today. 

The physical reality of him, warm and wrapped around her, was a revelation. Something she had been clenching between her teeth for at least a year loosened and let go. All at once, she felt worried that she might start crying about all of the things she hadn’t really let herself cry about yet. 

Only, it turned out that she was very tired. 

She fell asleep without any trouble at all. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Week 6, Day 7 - Saturday**

Ginny separated her from the crowd on the way back to their bunks after lights out. “Hermione. Can we talk?” Her lips were tight and her face looked drawn. 

“Sure. What’s bothering you?”

Ginny sighed and sank down onto the steps of the counselor cabin. Hermione sat beside her. 

“You’d tell me if you were dating my brother, right?”

“Ron?” Hermione wrinkled her nose. “You know we only kissed once like two years ago and it was an unmitigated disaster. I feel like I’ve barely even seen him this summer.”

“No, not Ron!” Ginny hissed. “Charlie!”

Hermione’s eyes went wide. “Why would you think I’m dating Charlie?” Why she hadn’t just said no, she wasn’t certain. 

Ginny cast a long, considering look at her. “You’re always together. Like, it seems like you’re always coming back from somewhere alone together, or you’re always sitting together. And I know him, Hermione. He flirts with you an awful lot.”

Hermione humphed skeptically. “He’s like that with everyone.”

“No, he’s not. He’s _friendly_ with everyone. But he’s _different_ with you.”

Hermione looked down at her hands and twiddled her thumbs. She looked up at Ginny. “I’m not dating him, I promise. We just have the same day off, and somehow he always talks me into going off on adventures with him.” 

Ginny raised a brow at her. “Does _he_ know he isn’t dating you?”

Hermione thought about Charlie’s hand over hers on the gearshift. She thought about his warm body wrapped snugly around her in the rain-drenched tent. She thought about him, on his second day at camp, asking her if she was single. 

These carefully buried events, each suppressed easily enough when viewed individually, painted an increasingly damning picture when collaged together. 

Hermione sighed and smiled a little sadly at Ginny. She grabbed her friend’s hand and laced their pinkies together. “Look,” she said. “We haven’t kissed or anything. I promise. But. If something does happen, you’ll be the first to know.” 

A panicked reckoning churned in Hermione’s stomach. The possibility was not wholly new to her, but she had not explicitly _allowed_ herself to entertain it before. Saying it out loud made it real.

“Pinky promise?” Ginny asked, lifting their linked hands. 

“Pinky promise.” 

* * *

**Week 7, Day 5 - Thursday**

Charlie was juggling three mealy cafeteria apples not far from the girls’ counselor cabin. “H! I was just about to come find you. What are you doing right now?”

Hermione proffered her clipboard. “I’m going over the lights out routines one last time. I think with a few tweaks we can maximize —”

“Wrong!” Charlie was _twinkling_ at her, all dangerous dimples and gleaming eyes, which was 100% not allowed. He snatched her clipboard and held it above his head. He was only an inch or two taller than her, but his arms were long enough to keep it out of her grasp, and she wasn’t going to jump for it like a child. 

At least not more than a couple of times. 

He raised the clipboard high above his head in triumph. “You’re coming on an adventure with me.”

Hermione groaned, but she felt herself smiling. Her self-control was truly slipping. 

“Charlie, I really have to —”

“Uh uh, Granger. You’ve already made this camp as efficient as it’s going to get. This is the last week. Aren’t you always talking about making this a summer to remember?”

This warranted a grudging nod.

“Well, what’s more memorable? An afternoon wrangling logistics that you’ve already wrestled within an inch of their lives?” He rattled the clipboard like it was a tambourine. “Or a surprise trip to a beautiful location with yours truly?” Charlie shot her a heart-meltingly crooked grin, and just like that, the final results were in. 

Hermione was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, officially and irrevocably fucked. 

“I don’t like surprises.” It annoyed her how coy it sounded.  
  
Charlie shook his head at her, narrowing his eyes playfully. “You sure do keep me on my toes, H.”

Sensing his guard was down, she made a wild leap for the clipboard, barely catching the edge of it. His other hand gripped her wrist and her free hand wrapped around his bicep, futilely trying to pull his arm down. They both froze, mid-dynamic tension, breathing heavily. He was looking at her like he was waiting for something.

Ever since the tent, the space between them had been charged, the air thicker even than before.

She stepped back, and he let her go, handing her the clipboard.

Something had gone soft in his face and suddenly she knew, with terrifying clarity, that she had the power to wound him. 

It was a new and terrible feeling. Because no matter what she’d said in a fit of pique, it was impossible not to like Charlie Weasley. Despite what she might have pretended, to herself and others, she’d only ever tried not to because she’d known from moment one that she was inclined to like him far too much for her own good. 

“Okay.” She rolled her eyes, but she was also grinning. “Let’s go. What should I bring?”

“Just yourself,” Charlie answered with a smile. But she grabbed a small pack and loaded it with a sweater, her big water bottle, and a paperback novel, because _you never knew_. 

She also laced up her hiking boots, because she _did_ know Charlie. 

\--<>\--

Charlie’s truck was an old light blue Datsun with a dusty red tailgate. Under a deep layer of grime, a faded bumper sticker read: _Not all those who wander are lost_. Hermione hopped up into the passenger seat and buckled herself in. 

“Do you want to feel how Old Blue shifts today, H?” He winked at her as they pulled out of the parking lot. 

“Oh, but I already know.” Hermione smirked at him and sat back in her seat, keeping her hand in her lap. 

Charlie’s eyes had a wicked gleam. “Your loss.” 

After a few miles on the narrow rural highway, Charlie turned off onto a one-lane road switchbacking up a hillside, then turned again. They drove down a long and narrow gravel track, winding steadily up, a cloud of dust rising behind them. It was mostly old-growth up this far, deep forest checkerboarded with cleared or thinned parcels of private property. 

Charlie parked the truck in a small dirt pullout and bounded out of the cab, gathering sundry items from the truck bed. A hat. A small daypack. Several baskets. His guitar, in a gig bag. A long wooden pole with a wire fruit-picking basket mounted on it. And a machete.

“What are you getting me into, Weasley?” Hermione raised a brow as Charlie wordlessly handed her the fruit-picker.

He tied his gray paisley bandana around his forehead and slipped the wide-brimmed sable fedora over it, his wavy red hair spilling out from under the brim. His aviator sunglasses were sliding down his nose. He was wearing one of his plaid flannels, cut just below the shoulder, with cut-off jean shorts and hiking boots. His distractingly muscled arms and calves were on full display, in all of their freckled glory. 

“Don’t you always tell the kids to wear long sleeves in the woods?” she asked. 

He shrugged amiably and slung the guitar over one shoulder, the daypack on the other. “I’m intrepid.”

“Well, you didn’t tell me to wear long sleeves!”

“You’re intrepid too.” Charlie grinned. “Watch out for poison ivy, though. This path is pretty overgrown, and there’ll be a lot of it.”

Charlie unsheathed the machete and began hacking his way through a patch of blackberry blocking a narrow trailhead, scarcely more than a deer trail. 

“Gratifying to know that isn’t to kill me with,” Hermione said, oozing sarcasm. 

Charlie laughed, a clear and open laugh that made her heart swell. 

“What?” she demanded with an indignant smirk, more for fun than anything else. She knew full well that it wasn’t at her expense. 

“The idea that I’d hurt anyone, let alone you.” Charlie shook his head at her, eyes crinkled in amusement. “If only you knew.”

“Knew what?” Her voice was soft, sober. It wasn’t a game anymore. 

“The lengths I’d go to, H, to avoid ever doing you any harm.” His voice was light, casual, but it did not lack conviction. 

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Hermione said quietly, “if you don’t mean them.” She looked to the side and rubbed her arms.

“Who says I don’t mean it?” Charlie looked at her evenly. His eyes were warm but unflinching.

He turned back to the offending bramble and gave it one more good thwack, tossing the thorny stems to the side, then pressed forward down the path. Hermione took a deep breath and followed him at a careful distance, perilously balancing the fruit picker on her shoulder, unable to shake loose his words. 

She caught up with him a few hundred yards down the overgrown track, where the woods opened abruptly into a meadow suffused with warm afternoon light. 

About a dozen cherry trees, gnarled and unruly, rose up before them on a narrow tract of gently slanted land.

The sunlight was thick and golden, perfect, a layer of honey over the wild yellow-green meadow that had grown up in the neglected orchard. The trees were heavy with dark red fruit. 

It was so beautiful and so unexpected that she inhaled sharply and reached for Charlie’s hand.

His hand was big, broad, with square palms and strong, thick fingers. They were coarse and calloused, but he held her hand gently. He stroked his rough thumb over the inside of her wrist and she felt her hairs stand on end. Not unpleasantly. 

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

“It’s gorgeous.” She released his hand and walked towards a tree, scaring up grasshoppers and small white butterflies from the tall grass. “What is this place?” 

Charlie had already reached the nearest tree and was pulling down some low-hanging cherries. “An old homesteader lived up here alone for decades. There’s a cabin over there, returning to the earth basically —” He gestured vaguely to the east. “He died about ten years back and no one ever bought the property. It’s not a great spot for a farm; the soil’s poor and the elevation’s too high. But that also means cherries late into the season. A lot of local folks come up here to pick them. The trees are a mess, without anyone pruning them. But the fruit is still good.” 

He stepped close to her, handing her a few cherries, wine red and glistening. His elbow brushed hers. He was a full foot closer to her than was socially acceptable, but she did not step back. 

“They’re pretty tart.”

She popped a cherry into her mouth, savoring it. It was sharp and sour, but deliciously juicy. Just sweet enough. “God, that’s good,” she said, pulling the pit out of her mouth. 

“I know,” he said, grinning at her. 

He handed her a basket and they set to work, eating as they went. The fruit-picker was useful, but Charlie was an advocate for more creative methods. At his urging, Hermione climbed on his back and he hoisted her up onto his shoulders. His huge hands grasping her thighs to hold her in place, not to mention the back of his head clutched between her legs, stirred something raw and reckless within her. Charlie lurched around while she grasped somewhat futilely for cherries, teasing her until she was laughing so hard he had to set her down. 

When both of their baskets were full of fruit, Charlie unfurled a light-weight checkered blanket from his pack and spread it out on a fairly barren patch of grass, gently probing the area with a stick first to flush out any snakes and bugs. “Don’t want to crush anybody,” he said, smiling at her. 

His inherent goodness was almost blinding; she could hardly bear to look straight at him. 

Hermione collapsed onto the blanket with a contented sigh, and Charlie eased himself down next to her, casting off his hat and sunglasses. He pulled a tin out of his pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Is that a joint?” Hermione propped herself up on an elbow and squinted at him. 

Charlie held his arms up in supplication. “If I say yes are you going to disown me?” 

Hermione shrugged. “I don’t care. There’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that casual marijuana use is dangerous, and its criminalization is largely racially motivated. Knock yourself out.”

Charlie laughed. “You’re full of surprises, Granger. I thought you were all about rules.”

Hermione scoffed. “Well, only when they make _sense._ And when they aren’t _fundamentally unjust.”_

Charlie lit the joint and took a long pull. He held it in for a moment, then exhaled a cloud of sickly sweet smoke. “What’s mine is yours,” he said easily, “but I assume you aren’t interested?”

If he had offered it to her directly, or put any kind of social pressure on her, Hermione would have emphatically declined. But, she was vexed to discover, the fact that he had correctly assumed she wouldn’t want to participate made her want to try it after all. 

“Actually, I’ll take it.” She sat up and held out her hand. Charlie raised his brows in surprise but passed the joint over, its ember still glowing.

“Do you know what to do?” He said it with extraordinary kindness, but she felt a weird need to prove herself, even though she knew it wouldn’t matter to him.

“Yup.” She tried to keep her voice casual, as though this were not one of the only times in her life that she had ever voluntarily relinquished control. She took a hit, mimicking him, and felt the smoke burning her lungs. After a moment, she exhaled, coughing only a little bit. She passed it back to him. 

“It’s pretty good stuff,” he said. “California outdoor, almost the last of my private stash, from when I was out there last season. A mellow body high.” Hermione didn’t really know what any of that meant, but she nodded as though she did. 

A sort of heightened aliveness spread slowly through her limbs. She became acutely aware of the sound of the wind in the grass, of the two square inches of Charlie’s leg that were brushing against hers. A feeling of deep ease was unspooling within her muscles.

She lay all the way down, feeling the way her back pressed against the earth, then feeling the way the earth pressed back, as though it were also alive. Which she supposed, in a way, it was. 

Charlie had picked up his guitar and started playing “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” 

Hermione became aware that music wasn’t just something you heard, but also something you felt in your body, in your breath. It rippled through her, moved inside of her. Reverberation.

Yeah, something was definitely happening to her.

Above her, the sky was an impossible blue, absolutely braggy with fluffy white clouds. She sat up sluggishly and watched Charlie. He was looking right at her again. 

He always sang _into_ her, like he had no doubts about anything about her. Like it pained him not even a little to sing a love song right at someone without knowing where they stood. She, however, had doubts. She doubted, for example, that he knew how terrifying it was, that he seemed so sure of her without having any reason to be.

But it was also kind of nice. 

And her doubts were much harder to pin down right now. Anything remotely resembling a thought seemed to drift right past her, replaced by the smell of sun-baked skin and ripe fruit and wild roses, eclipsed by the breeze against her face and the all-encompassing vibrations of Charlie’s warm tenor. It was refreshing, to simply sink into sensation.

Charlie put the guitar down and smiled at her. He passed her a water bottle. “You starting to feel it?”

She sipped, then cast him a hazy smile. “Definitely.” 

“Here.” He rifled through the basket and came up with a handful of dark cherries. “Try one of these again now.” He pressed a cherry against her lips and she bit into it, juice dripping down her chin and onto his hand. 

“Fuck,” she said with an ecstatic groan. “How are these even better now?”

Hermione plucked a cherry from the basket and brought it to Charlie’s lips. He pulled it into his mouth, closing his eyes in reverence. “Damn.” His voice was husky. He spat out the pit.

When he turned back to her, his eyes were gleaming. He held out another cherry, almost overripe, but instead of feeding it to her, he crushed it gently against her face. “Hey!” she squealed, laughing, smashing a cherry into his stubbled chin. He captured her wrist with one hand, and time stopped again, and they were frozen together in it. 

She felt the kiss coming long before it happened — the way you always heard a train before you ever saw it — but the moment hadn’t arrived just yet. 

“I think about you, you know.” Her voice had entered the outer world without her explicit permission. He was still grasping her wrist, his other hand lingering on her face.

“Oh yeah?” His smirk could power cities. His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. “What do you think about me?” 

“All kinds of things.”

“Are you thinking now?”

“Not even a little bit.” She drew his calloused thumb into her mouth without hesitation, sucking the sticky sweetness from it, stroking her tongue along it from base to tip.

He inhaled sharply, his eyelids fluttering. “Christ, H,” he murmured, his breath ragged. It _did_ things to her.

“Shh,” she said, pressing a cherry-covered finger against his lips. He darted his tongue out and licked it before planting a small kiss on her fingertip. 

The moment had rounded the mountain and chugged into the station. The last vestige of Hermione's resistance was leaning out the window of the second-story lounge car, waving a white handkerchief in surrender.

And so she leaned into him, clutching his jaw with her sticky fingers, and kissed him fully on the mouth. He tasted of cherries and he was made of sunlight, and his ridiculously attractive arms, his fascinatingly large hands, were absolutely _everywhere_. She opened her mouth to his, pulling on his lower lip. 

Then they were rolling somehow, tumbling together, grappling back and forth across the blanket, clutching one another. First he was above her, pressing ardently against her, his lips on hers, and then she wrestled him down and was sitting astride him, kissing his neck, skating her hand under the edge of his flannel and over the hard planes of his stomach.

Suddenly dizzy, she paused, panting, above him. God, he was gorgeous, gazing up at her like she was worth wanting. 

She wanted to fuck him: urgently, desperately, immediately. Right out here in the grass like wild animals. Dimly, she could almost recognize that she had wanted this all along.

And yet. Things were a little too fuzzy. She wanted him, if she were ever to truly have him, in high definition; right now, all of the edges were blurred. 

“H? Are you okay?” His blue-green eyes were wide with gentle concern. He caught her hand and stroked it softly. 

“So good,” she said, laughing. She sat back over his hips, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. _“So_ good. Only.” She closed her eyes, focusing on her breath. “Charlie, it’s possible that I’m _really_ fucking high.” 

“Hey, H, it’s okay,” he said, rubbing her back reassuringly. “Let’s stop.”

“Alright,” she said, climbing unsteadily off of him. “But can I just. . . stay here?” She tucked herself into his side, resting her head on his chest.

“Of course.” He wrapped an arm around her, settling a hand at her waist. She groped around until she found his other hand and laced her fingers through his. 

She closed her eyes, letting herself get lost in sound. Through one ear, she heard birds, the whispering breeze, crickets. Through the other, Charlie’s steady heart. 

They lay like that for a long, long time. 

\--<>\--

“Charlie.” Before he could get out of the truck, she slid close to him on the long bench seat and put her hand on his thigh. She ran a finger over his stubbled jaw, turning his face towards her, and tilted towards him, eyes fluttering closed.

Charlie swallowed hard. “Kiss me tomorrow.”

“But I’m coming down —”

“I know. But —” He caught her hand, running his thumb over it gently. “This doesn’t mean nothing to me, H. I need to know you’re sure.” 

His face was open, all of the way unfolded, and she felt it again, jabbing at her ribs — the ways that she could wound him.

“Tomorrow? You promise?”

He planted a small kiss on her forehead. “I solemnly swear.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Charlie plays in the Orchard is "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" by Bob Dylan.


	5. Chapter 5

**Week 7, Day 6 - Friday**

Last night it had rained, so there hadn’t been a campfire. The girls’ counselor cabin was strewn with half-packed suitcases, dripping ponchos, and drying swimsuits. The final days were upon them, and Camp Pigwidgeon took a collective breath. 

Hermione had pulled Ginny aside after the movie in the Lodge and told her about the kiss, reluctantly accepting a squealing embrace and her friend’s enthusiastic support. 

Charlie wasn’t at Friday’s Morning Meeting. Searching for him as the crowd dispersed, she almost ran right into Neville.

“Hermione, I was looking for you —” He had _really_ gotten tall since last year. 

“Oh, Neville! Have you seen Charlie?”

“Actually, he, ah. . .” Neville scratched at his neck, seeming slightly uncertain. “He asked me to give this to you.” He passed her a carefully folded paper square, smiling sheepishly as he ambled away. 

Neat-ish block letters filled the unfolded note. 

_H -_

_Sorry to break a promise but there’s been a whole thing with the propane tanks and Dad’s sending me to deal with it. Fought to stay - lost that one._

_Anyway I’ll be back before the dance. Save 1 for me H, OK?_

_Tomorrow! I really mean it this time._

_\- C_

Next to his initial, he’d drawn a tiny, clumsy heart. 

One day felt like a whole lot when she had wasted an entire summer’s worth of opportunity. 

_Tomorrow._

* * *

**Week 7, Day 7 - The Last Official Day of Camp**

Ginny looked up at her and wrinkled her nose. “You’re wearing _that?”_

“What!?” Hermione rose to the defense of her oversized patterned blazer. “It has” — she gestured vaguely — “bright colors! Fun shapes!”

“Sorry, Hermione,” Lavender said with an air of condolence, “but you do kind of look like my mom.”

“But your mom is pretty cool, right?” 

Lavender sighed with what could only be pity.

“Here,” Ginny said, tossing Hermione the jean shorts she’d been wearing earlier and a black belt. “Lose the skirt.” 

“You want me to wear _shorts_ with this?!” The suggestion rattled Hermione’s sensibilities. 

But when she put it on, she had to admit that she felt pretty good. 

“Remember,” she called to the girls as she breezed out the door half an hour early, determined to unilaterally rule set-up from the throne of her mighty clipboard, “this dance is for the _campers!”_

Even though she saw his clear black block letters in her mind. _Save 1 for me._ And more importantly, _tomorrow._

Or, now — _today._

\--<>\--

Hermione was directing the Badger girls in setting up a line of folding chairs against the far wall when she felt eyes on her.

Charlie was leaning in the doorway, spiffed up in a blue short-sleeve button-down. His eyes were focused on her with a dark, naked intensity. She had always thought the phrase _undressing her with his eyes_ was stupid.

It did not feel very stupid in practice. 

With a floppy grin and a wink, he turned and strolled over to the snack table to explore his deep, personal relationship with his one true love: Neville Longbottom. Before she had a chance to feel too sore, she saw the game in it. 

He was making her wait. And as impatient as she was, she had to admit that it was a little bit. . . fun. _Exciting._

So Hermione made him wait too. She fussed with crepe paper. She helped Jenny H. pour out cups of punch. She watched in fascination as Justin, looking more like a chipmunk than ever in his sparkling bowtie, handled each of his records with intense precision, as if Volume I of Neil Diamond’s _Hot August Night_ were a grenade that might explode in his delicate hands. He had been talking about DJing this dance since the second day of camp, and he had the sweaty focus of someone who was currently living out the moment he had been born for. At Justin’s request, she fetched a dusty boombox from the kitchen so that he could alternate cassette singles with his collection of beloved LPs. 

Then she surveyed her clipboard while inspecting the dance floor, although there was not really much to see. A sea of listless slow dancers swayed at arm’s length, while clumps of kids mumbled nervously in corners, at the snack table. 

Hermione grinned in triumph when Charlie walked up to her, the want in his eyes undiminished. She had _won._

“You’re killing me, H.” He took the clipboard from her hands and tossed it on a chair. “Dance with me.” 

“But we’re supposed to be chaperoning.” It was a weak argument, and she knew it. The fact that she couldn’t stop smiling did not help her case. 

Charlie raised a skeptical brow. She took a look around the room, finding it to be well within the counselor-camper ratio, even without Neville and Pansy, who seemed to have disappeared. And without Draco, but that came as no surprise. 

“Come on.” He took her hand, and she went with him, because she might be contrary and relentlessly stubborn, but she was done fighting against things that she actually wanted. 

Hermione followed him up the rickety aluminum stairs on the side of the stage and behind the curtain into the dusty darkness. An upright piano with a sheet thrown over it was dimly revealed by the faint slice of light falling through the gap in the curtain and the red glow of the exit sign. There was a stack of folded metal chairs stashed in the corner.

“So can I have my dance now?” She heard, rather than saw, Charlie’s smile. 

“I suppose it’s only fair.” She laughed as she stepped into him and he settled his broad hands around her waist. 

Hermione combed her fingers through the curls at the base of his neck. She swayed closer, stepping into him until their bodies brushed together. 

In the dark, every touch, every sound was heightened. The somewhat muted strains of “Eternal Flame” over the speakers. The hushed rumble of Charlie’s breathing. The unmistakable tang of him. His hand moving up under her blazer, rubbing her shoulder blade through her black mock-neck shell. 

They were nearly cheek to cheek. She pulled back and her nose brushed his. 

“Can I have my kiss now?” she whispered.

“I suppose it’s only fair,” he deadpanned, moving into her until she was forced to step back against the wall. 

She kissed him, long and reckless, like she had wanted to for longer than she dared to admit. His mouth met hers and pushed back, intent and hungry, and it woke up something impulsive inside of her, something that, for once, made her immune to overthinking.

God, he could kiss. 

“Fuck, H, do you know how much I’ve wanted you?” He sucked her earlobe into his mouth, tugged it gently with his teeth.

She shuddered pleasantly. “How much?” she asked.

“So fucking much,” he murmured in her ear. She tugged on his belt loops. 

He parted her knees with his thigh, pressing wet kisses into her neck.

“Do you know how much I’ve wanted _you?”_ She spoke into his collarbone, which she was plying with kisses. The seam of her jean shorts was trapped between her clit and his thigh, and she rolled her hips against him. 

“How much?” His voice was husky, close. His huge, wonderful hands drifted over her ass, pulling her into him even as he pushed her against the wall. 

The music ended abruptly. There was an awkward quietness from the auditorium as Justin changed the song, and they froze for a moment. After a minute or so of ambient chatter, “Time of My Life” came roaring over the speaker about twice as loudly as the last song until Justin adjusted the volume down. 

Hermione put her hands on Charlie’s shoulders and turned him gently. She eased him back against the wall, making sure they were clear of an intimidating panel of knobs and switches. She shrugged out of her blazer and tossed it unceremoniously to the floor. Then she turned in his arms, leaning into him with her back resting against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and dropped his mouth to her neck. 

She unbuckled the belt on her high-waisted denim shorts. He stilled, hesitating. 

“H — are you sure? Here?” His fingers cupped her hips, tracing little arcs along them as she undid her button and yanked the zipper down but left her shorts all of the way on. 

“I’m sure.” Her brain had left the building; she was made only of uncomplicated, impatient want. She laid her left hand on top of his and guided it under the waistband of her pragmatic cotton underwear. “Don’t you want to know how much I’ve wanted you?” she asked again.

“How much?” Almost trembling, he spoke with some effort, still nibbling on her neck. 

“This much.” Hermione felt very dangerous as she pushed his hand all of the way down and ground against it, feeling him shudder behind her as he felt how wet she was. Out on the dance floor, someone coughed.

 _“Hermione._ I’ve wanted you all summer. You must have known.” His whispered words were warm and breathy against her ear. She shivered as his enormous fingers pressed against her. His other hand skated up under her shirt, sliding beneath the band of her sensible bra to firmly roll her nipple.

“I fall in love a little bit everywhere I go, H.” He kept stroking her gently as he spoke. “The world is full of amazing people. But you’re — _amazing_ amazing. You’ve got something different. You really do. I’ve never known anyone like you.” It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate what he was saying, but she would rather focus on the task at hand. They could have feelings _later._ Right now, she wanted him to fuck her. She clasped his hand where it was submerged in her shorts, guiding it until his finger was inside of her, and bucked against him, gasping.

“It’s not just that you’re gorgeous. And you are!” The angle wasn’t ideal, but Charlie clearly knew what he was doing. 

“But you’re also so smart, and you’re passionate.” He rocked against her, making a soft choked sound, and she felt his erection against her ass. His voice was very sexy, but she also sort of wished that he would shut up. She had her own private collection of feelings that she would like to tell him in the dark. . . but ideally _after_ sex. 

“You say what you really think.” His thumb stirred her clit, and she arched into the pressure. “You know, I really do think you should go into public policy —” 

“That’s very sweet but — not now, Charlie,” she hissed. 

“Oh, sorry.” 

She registered the sudden absence of his thumb.

“No, not that, that was good! I meant — not just now with the career advice.”

“Oh,” he whispered with a little laugh, reintroducing his thumb to the process. “Of course. Anyway, I just. . . I really care about you, H. It wasn’t a sure thing, you know — I didn’t know if this was going to happen. I feel so lucky right now.” He peppered her ear, her neck, her cheek with sweet little kisses. Hermione reached her left hand back, tangling it in his hair. She was dictating the rhythm now, rocking into him.

He pinched her nipple again, then slid his hand out from under her shirt and up over her breastbone, clutching her to him. “God, I just want to hold you. I just want to hold you while you come.” He added a second finger. 

Abruptly, she came shockingly hard over his hand, much sooner than she’d expected. Her arm thrashed wildly against the wall, knocking against invisible objects as she flailed against him. 

Through the veil of her euphoria, biting her own palm so she didn’t cry out, Hermione dimly registered a strange noise — a sort of mechanical whir — and Charlie turning his head. 

Still in the throes of her orgasm, Hermione opened her eyes. A fluorescent light was slowly flickering to life above them, and in its strobes, she glimpsed Charlie groping against the wall desperately, even as she clenched around his other hand. 

“Charlie,” she choked out. “What’s — ohhh, fuck — happening?”

“It’s the _curtain_.” His voice came out in an ominous stage whisper, and for the first time it occurred to her to worry. “But stay with me, H. I’ve got you.” 

Gradually coming down, with Charlie’s hand still pressed firmly into her pelvis, she turned her head to her right. A dusty burgundy curtain was juddering slowly towards them, revealing the stage to the 100-odd attendees of the dance. She gasped in horror when she realized she must have mashed the button panel as she came. 

Charlie finally managed to hit the right button again and the terrible noise ceased. The curtains shuddered to a halt halfway open, the stage now bathed in sallow overhead light. 

They were still concealed, but they exchanged a panicky glance. Charlie disentangled himself from her shorts then grabbed her hand and pulled her forward, and it was like that, holding hands and running towards the back exit, that Percy Weasley found them. 

“Time of My Life” was still, somehow, blaring over the speakers.

They froze in place. Escape was futile. Hermione’s blazer lay discarded on the floor. The fly of her jean shorts was wide open, and her black shell was still hiked up, revealing a swath of her brown stomach. She realized with a start that one of her breasts was entirely below the band of her bra. The air smelled, distinctly and damningly, of her vagina. 

Percy paused, taking in the scene with his jaw hanging open, then mutely pressed his palm against his forehead. From the crowd, someone — Padma, maybe? — asked if he needed help. He held out one hand towards the auditorium, resembling nothing so much as a crossing guard, and shook his head. “Everything’s fine,” he called. “I’ve got it.” He walked calmly to the button display and fiddled with it until the curtains stuttered into motion, gradually closing. 

When the curtain was fully closed, he stalked over to them.

“Really, Charlie!?” Percy finally bit out with terrifying control. He was gripping his clipboard with white knuckles and it seemed equally possible that he might throw it and start yelling or turn and walk away without saying another word. 

He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. When he spoke, it was with scary calm. “Miss Granger,” he said, which was not something _anyone_ had ever called her before in her life, not even Percy. “Take a minute to collect yourself and meet me in my office.” He turned to his brother, a vein at his temple twitching. “Charlie. Outside. Now.” 

Charlie squeezed her hand and managed a reassuring smile. “Meet me at my cabin after, okay?” 

Hermione turned her back as the Weasley brothers walked away, covertly zipping up her shorts. She adjusted her top, wrestling her rogue breast back into her bra cup. She dusted off her blazer and slung it over her shoulder. Then she strode briskly down the aluminum stairs and through the dance with her head held high. She did not make eye contact with anyone. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. 

In the Lodge’s wheelchair-accessible bathroom, she splashed water on her face and had a reckoning with her reflection. She couldn’t help but notice that she looked pretty — and happy — with warm copper undertones blooming on her flushed cheekbones. Probably she should feel more worried about all of this.

But she was a legal adult. No one was going to call her parents. It was the last day of camp. 

As painful as it would be, if the worst thing that happened to her was a mortifying sex talk with Molly Weasley and one less reference on her next job application, she would survive. 

A ruthless, reckless woman stared back at her from the mirror. “Bring it,” she said, to herself in the mirror and herself in the world and to the world itself. To her great surprise, she _liked_ this new, lawless version of herself. 

Walking down the corridor to Percy’s office, she caught snippets of Charlie and Percy arguing quietly outside, drifting through an open window. Phrases like “the paperwork” and “can you imagine if Mom” and “discretion” and “propriety” and “well, after this, _you_ owe _me_.”

She marched into Percy’s office and braced herself to meet her fate.

\--<>\--

Percy sighed. He clicked and unclicked his pen, the one he got very uptight about anyone ever borrowing. He pushed his glasses up, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. 

Wordlessly, he rose and crossed to the enormous gray shredding machine hulked in the corner of the office. It gave a great mechanical groan and shudder as the half-completed pink slip disappeared into its maw. 

Hermione sat immobilised, her lips slightly parted. She dared not breathe, in case he changed his mind. 

Percy sank back into his battered office chair and spun slowly back to face her. He rested his elbows on the desk and folded his hands as though in prayer. 

The sound of mosquitos buzzing wafted through the screen of the open window. Percy buried his face in his clasped hands then looked back up at her. The bare bulb that hung over his desk illuminated the dark circles under his eyes. He emanated the grizzled resignation of someone who had seen things he couldn’t unsee.

“You’ve been an excellent counselor.” Percy was back to his usual matter-of-fact manner, sitting bolt upright. “Your improvements to our mealtime and lights out systems this summer have improved efficiency at least anecdotally. As a CIT last year, you took on more responsibility than most of our head counselors, and you’re the only person in camp history to be promoted directly to head counselor in their first year. Before that, you attended Camp Pigwidgeon for seven consecutive years, with, up to this point, a spotless record.”

He looked right at her and sighed. 

Hermione’s stomach twisted as she waited for the blow. 

“If I look away from this,” Percy said, “will you make a deal with me?”

“What is it?” Hermione asked, her voice shrewd as her mind grasped at possible blackmail and bribery schemes. She imagined herself, absurdly, perpetually carting stacks of his heavy law books across the Columbia campus. 

Percy’s entire demeanor changed. Something in him slumped and softened, radiating quiet defeat. He leaned back in his swivel chair, regarding the ceiling. 

“I know my brother seems . . . _breezy_.” This with just a little disdain. “But —”

He sat up again, and looked right at Hermione, deadly serious. 

“— I’ve known him my whole life, and he’s a romantic at heart. He gets attached.” 

Hermione chewed her lip, not loving where this was going.

“I’m not saying marry him,” Percy said, causing Hermione to jolt slightly. “But just — try not to hurt him, if you can help it.” 

Hermione sat, rather like a deer caught under the gently swaying bare bulb, frozen inside this surreal conversation with the younger brother of the boy who had just brought her to orgasm in an auditorium of approximately 100 campers. 

Very quietly and behind a curtain, _but still._

She looked at Percy wryly, pressing her lips together. “Okay,” she said, “it’s a deal.”

“Look, it’s all very. . . new,” she said quietly. “But I’ll keep what you said in mind. And — I’ll do my best. I’ll try.”

“That’s all I can ask.” Percy’s lips were quirked in a surprisingly sincere little smile. 

Hermione couldn’t help but snicker. “I thought you were going to make me buy your coffee every morning for a year.”

“That’s excessive,” Percy said with a grin, “but I wouldn’t say no to once a month.” In that moment, he was strangely relaxed, which made him look more like his brothers than usual. 

“Deal.” Hermione extended her hand, smiling, and they shook on it. 

“That’ll be all.” Percy stood, stuffing his hands in his pockets. It was one of those rare moments when she realized he was only twenty-two.

She shot him a grateful look as she pulled herself out of her chair. She was almost at the door when she paused, turning back. 

“About Charlie,” she said. 

Percy raised one auburn brow. 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen.” She gazed at her hands, folded in front of her. “I’m driving up tomorrow. Monday at the latest. But —”

She looked up at him, smiling a little sadly. “I do really care about him. Just so you know.”

“You should,” Percy said, not unkindly. “He’s one of the good ones.” 

And then Hermione was out the door and wending down the cedar chip path under the dizzying stars, through the enveloping dark of rustling trees, to meet a certain objectively not unattractive man at his cabin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of my notes are about songs! 
> 
> "Eternal Flame" is by the Bangles. "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack is sung by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. The extended cut is almost seven minutes long and every time I've ever heard it I have thought, "How is this song not over yet?" 😂


	6. Chapter 6

**Liminal State - Hours 1-36, Saturday Night to Monday Morning**

Charlie hoisted her up above him from where she was pinned against the wall of his cabin, tucking her thighs over his shoulders. 

“You can hold on to the crossbeam for balance,” he said, bracing her firmly by the hips and peering up at her earnestly from between her legs, “but I’ve got you.”

“God, I’ve wanted to do this ever since you climbed up on my shoulders at the orchard.” His voice was hushed, reverent. He pressed fervent kisses to each of her thighs in turn before burying his face in her. 

So she came for the second time that night before he had ever unbuckled his belt, digging her feet into his bare back as he held her aloft some six feet up. When she cried out his name, she was pressed against the wall and clutching the rough-hewn pine crossbeam of a cabin he had built by hand. 

The soft-handed 19-year-old scholars of Columbia never stood a chance. 

Freshman Orientation didn’t _technically_ start until Tuesday morning. 

It couldn't hurt to stay for one more day. 

\--<>\--

“H, promise me something.” Charlie spoke almost into her neck. 

Hermione rolled to face him. Skin to skin, legs tangled, they were wrapped as closely around each other as they could manage. “Promise you what?”

Under the deep hush of night, their words were pebbles that they tossed towards the sky. 

“Promise me you’ll live in the moment.” 

Hermione almost snorted, only he sounded so sincere. 

In the dark, he groped until he found her hand. “I really care about you. All of the stuff I said earlier — it was true. I’ve never felt quite this way before. And I’ve loved a lot of people. . .” He sighed. “But, H, you _haven’t.”_

“I’ve loved _some.”_

It sounded petulant and defensive, even to her. 

“I don’t mean it in a bad way.” Charlie released her hand and traced lazy loops over her back. “I just mean. . . Look, H, I want you to always live your one wild life exactly the way you want to live it. I wouldn’t want you not to, because of me.” 

Hermione absorbed his words, letting them sit. “Charlie. . .” She arched a brow at him. “Is this your way of trying to tell me to sleep with other people at college?”

His ribs shook against her as he laughed. “Basically, yes.” 

She bit her lip, considering. “You’ll still visit me though?”

“Obviously. And maybe — only if you like the idea — I could find a gig at a resort in the northeast this winter. Instead of Colorado. There are some decent places in New Hampshire and Vermont. And we could see each other more often.”

“I’d love that, but. . . the promise goes both ways, Charlie. I don’t want you to change your plans because of me. You have to live your one wild life, too.”

He shrugged. “Plans change. Maybe what I want to do _in the moment_ is find a place to snowboard that’s closer to you.”

“Okayyy.” She laughed. “I do give my solemn oath that I will do my best to live in the moment. But you have to, too.”

“Pinky swear?” He found her hand again and wrapped his big, dumb, beautiful, perfect pinky around hers. 

“Pinky swear.”

They sealed it with a kiss. 

“You Weasleys.” She shook her head as they broke apart. “Always trying to make deals.” 

\--<>\--

It was, frankly, far too much sex for 36 hours. But they were about to part and walk out into the world in separate directions. Neither one of them was able to keep their hands off the other. 

They’d entered some kind of other reality, one made only of mouth and skin and want. They had sex on the bed, the floor, against the wall, in a variety of inventive positions. Early in the morning, in the bathhouse shower under a lukewarm spray as the ancient Camp Pigwidgeon water heater struggled. Sex between bursts of fitful sleep. Tender touches under the gray light of dawn. 

She lost track of how many times she came, surrendering herself completely to an ebbing and flowing tide of orgasm. It turned out Charlie Weasley approached female pleasure with the focus and drive of an Olympic athlete. 

She should have known to expect this kind of sex from someone who did clap push-ups for fun. Only she hadn’t exactly known that this kind of sex was possible. 

She and Viktor had had objectively good sex, efficient, caring, connected sex in which he had always ensured that she reached orgasm exactly once every single time. Based on anecdotal evidence gleaned from friends, media, and observation, she had assumed that sex like that was in about the 98th percentile of what a woman could reasonably expect. She could have lived her entire life satisfied with that kind of sex. 

Only Charlie seemed bound and determined to absolutely shatter the curve. 

They took breaks. He snuck off to the Canteen and brought back peanut butter toast. They photographed each other with Charlie’s Polaroid camera. They played tinny songs on his portable tape recorder, dancing around the cabin. He went down on her until she had to ask him to stop. 

When they couldn’t fuck anymore, they kissed, rolling around together with enthusiastic futility. They were Eros and Psyche, drinking in each other’s bodies. When they couldn’t kiss anymore, they talked, spilling their secrets out into the night. 

When they couldn’t talk anymore, they slept. 

Hermione woke up to a loud banging on the door. She groaned and stretched; the cabin was far too bright. Charlie struggled into his boxers and opened the door. 

“Where have you _been?”_ Ginny pushed into the cabin. “Mom and Dad are short-staffed for closedown, and Camper Checkout has been a clusterfuck because we can’t find Hermione — Oh!” Ginny’s eyes went wide as she registered Hermione in the bed, frantically pulling the covers around herself. 

Ginny turned to her brother. “Sorry to bust in. . . Look, I can cover for you until the afternoon, but after that you’re on your own. But you _owe_ me, big time.”

Charlie squinched one eye doubtfully. “Nope. Pretty sure you still owe me for not ever telling them about Dean Thomas.” 

“Oh, no way,” Ginny snorted. “This cancels that out and is worth an additional medium-sized IOU. Plus I covered for you when you were building this cabin. And I’ll throw in lying to Mom and Dad and telling them Hermione is sleeping in my cabin with me tonight.” 

“Fine,” Charlie sighed. “We’re even on Dean Thomas and I owe you one medium-sized favor.” He extended his hand to shake on it. 

Ginny recoiled. “Ew, I’m not touching your _hand_. Who knows where it’s been?” 

She had a point. 

Hermione, from her vantage point propped up against a stack of pillows, began to slow clap, a wry grin on her face. “Does the entire Weasley family run on an economy of favors?”

“Look H,” Charlie chuckled, “I know you’re an only child so this may shock you, but _quid pro quo_ is the foundation on which every successful sibling relationship rests.” 

“Four hours.” Ginny’s tone brokered no objections. “Make an appearance so they don’t get weird, _pretend_ to help for like an hour, and then you can come back to your gross love nest." As she walked to the door, she turned back to Hermione with a wicked grin and a double thumbs-up. “Good job, Hermione! I’ve always wanted a sister!”

Closing the door, Charlie came back to bed, where he immediately pulled down the sheet and began laying kisses over her warm belly. 

Hermione groaned, tangling her fingers in his hair. “Does _every_ Weasley jump immediately to talk of marriage?”

Charlie blew a raspberry on her belly, eyes full of mischief. “Every Weasley but me, pretty much.” 

* * *

**Liminal State - The Final Hour - Theoretically Monday**

Everyone who was still at camp gathered at the Lodge to see her off. Percy shook her hand and gave her his phone number in New York. Harry and Ron swept her up in their arms and promised to write. Arthur gave her a fatherly pat on the back and rambled at length about growing up. Molly squeezed her a little too hard and started crying about how she was always only a phone call away. Hermione’s own parents were not so openly affectionate, and she hadn’t seen them in nearly a year anyway. Even though the Weasleys’ parental displays made her a bit uncomfortable, she still soaked them up like a dry sponge. 

She scanned the lawn, where Charlie was walking her duffel out to the parking lot as an excuse to meet her at her car. 

Hermione swept Ginny into a big hug. “I’m going to miss you.”

“Nah,” Ginny said with a smirk. “You’re going to have a blast! Don’t think of us at all! But please come home for Thanksgiving.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Hermione said. 

“Kids! Let’s hustle! We’re losing daylight!” Arthur started shepherding his brood off to the remaining seasonal shutdown tasks. “Safe travels, Hermione!” He waved as he rounded the corner of the building. Molly Weasley, still wiping her eyes, shuffled towards the Canteen. 

“Charlie’s supposed to help her close the kitchen. I can distract her for probably . . .” Ginny tilted her head, squinting. “Ten minutes. After that, you’re out of luck.” They hugged one more time, and then Hermione rushed across the lawn to meet Charlie. 

The Red Rabbit was packed to the gills. Behind the car, where no one could see them, Charlie pulled Hermione into him, pinning her against the closed hatchback with a hungry, lingering kiss.

It would be easy, too easy, to wrap her legs around him. To let him lift her up and carry her that way back to his cabin, and then lay her down again. To miss all of Freshman Orientation free falling into the beautiful vortex that was Charlie Weasley’s body. 

This wasn’t the time for that, though, and she had to go. She broke the kiss, pressing her forehead into his. 

“I sure am gonna miss you, H.” 

“I’m going to miss you too, Charlie.”

He took off his best flannel, the one he’d been wearing the first day of camp, and draped it over her shoulders. He untied his gray bandana from where it was wrapped around his wrist and tied it around hers. He took off his sunglasses and propped them on her forehead. 

“Charlie! You can’t keep giving me all of your favorite belongings.”

“Try and stop me.” He smirked, then pressed a cassette tape into her palm. _H’S MIX_ was written in small, neat block letters. 

“When did you have time to make this?”

His eyes were sheepish. “I made it a few weeks ago.” 

She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry, so she did a little bit of both. 

“Are you sure you don’t want a co-pilot? I could drive you up, get you settled. Take the train to Poughkeepsie from the city and then the bus back from there. . .”

It was tempting, but even though it was what she wanted, it wasn’t what she needed. She took his hand. “Part of me wants to say yes, but. . . I think I have to do this by myself.”

“I get that, H. I really respect that.” Charlie nodded like someone who knew about setting out and doing things on his own, like it made perfect sense to him. 

“Well, I guess. . .” Her voice was watery. She brought her hand up to his cheek. 

“Travelers don’t say goodbye,” he said. His big hands were at her waist and she felt his thumbs rubbing over her stomach through her tank top. 

She laughed, a soft and bittersweet chuckle. “But I’m not a traveler.”

He looked at her appraisingly, the unyielding light of his affection trained right on her, then smirked. “I’m pretty sure you are now, H.” She tried this on, letting it sink in, and was surprised to find that he wasn’t wrong. 

She cupped his face with both hands and kissed him one last time, an earnest, memorizing kiss. There were words growing in her heart for how she felt about him, but they were not ripe yet. So she kissed the words into him instead of saying them aloud, her down payment on a feeling too big and new to declare. And he certainly kissed her back like he reciprocated. His thumb, exquisitely soft and slow on a spot between her shoulder blades, was a love letter unto itself.

They both pulled back and stood there looking at each other. Time slowed down, for just a couple of seconds, right there on the hinge of the future. In just a moment it would send her hurtling forward into the unknown. 

She wiped at her eyes and took a deep breath. Charlie blinked hard, then quirked his lips at her in a brave little smile.

Clasping both of her hands in his, he kissed first one of her eyelids, then the other. 

“See you later, then.” She stepped back, saluting him with a bittersweet smile. 

“See you later, H!” Charlie beamed at her even though his eyes were a little wet, and she felt how sincerely he _wanted_ her to go out and experience the wider world. It made her heart clench for him even more. “Seize the day!” 

So Hermione strapped herself into the Red Rabbit and pulled Charlie’s aviators down over her eyes. In the cupholder, she discovered a bouquet of weeds and wildflowers he had left for her, with an old peanut butter jar for a vase. She shook her head, smiling to herself, and started the engine. As she rolled down the drive, she glanced exactly once in the rearview mirror. She couldn’t see anything except a cloud of gravel dust, so she trained her gaze on the road ahead. 

When she got out on the two-lane highway, she pushed his mixtape into the player. After a pause and a click, Jimmy Page’s guitar intro filled the Rabbit. Hermione broke into a wide grin and rolled the power windows down. She thought of Charlie at the campfire, singing into her with burning eyes. When the drop hit, she cranked the volume up and started singing along. It was high afternoon, infinite summer, and just now the sun was at her back. She followed that winding black ribbon of road through the coniferous forest, under a forever sky, over the hills and far away. As she crested a small pass, she shifted into neutral and let gravity take her all the way down to the valley floor. 

She wasn’t far from the Interstate now. 

Hermione was buzzing with burnt coffee and lack of sleep and the lingering afterglow of hours of exceptional sex, not to mention the heady oxytocin rush of what might even be new love. The road was open ahead of her and the world seethed with possibility. She was young and alive and desirable and _free_. 

She was alone, headed towards an entirely unwritten future in New York City, where almost nobody knew her.

She had to admit, it felt really fucking good. 

* * *

**The First Day of the Rest of Your Life - Still Theoretically Monday**

“I was starting to worry you wouldn’t make it in time for Orientation tomorrow,” said Megan Miller from Topeka, Kansas, Yearbook Editor and President of the Lincoln High NHS chapter, as she finished unpacking and alphabetizing Hermione’s bookshelf. 

Hermione’s new roommate had bobbed chestnut hair and a pale dusting of freckles across her perfect button nose. She might as well have been the protagonist of a novel about a girl who had finally saved up to buy a horse, but she had been nothing but welcoming and helpful, so Hermione tried not to hold it against her. 

“I got caught up at camp. Thanks again for helping me get unpacked so quickly.” Hermione arranged her pencils carefully in a mug. Megan passed her a pile of textbooks, which she stacked carefully on her serviceable dorm desk. She fussed with her scrappy bouquet, then pinned the Polaroid of Charlie to her pegboard, smiling like an idiot the whole time.

From within its white frame, Charlie’s dazzling, rogue-ish smile betrayed intimate carnal knowledge of the photographer. 

“Wow.” Megan raised her brows as she peered at the photo, looking very impressed. “Just _wow._ Is that your _boyfriend?”_

“Not exactly.” She hadn’t stopped grinning. “We’re not exclusive.” 

“Geez, how _old_ is he?”

“Charlie? He’s 25.” Her packing done, Hermione rubbed her hands together briskly then flopped down on her sky blue duvet. “He’s a biologist, reptiles mostly, and he’s off on field gigs a lot. But he’s going to visit me this term. And we’ll probably see each other at Thanksgiving.” 

“So let me get this straight.” Megan sat cross-legged on her own bed and started labeling her notebooks. “Your parents live in Australia, you spent the past year in Bulgaria, you just got back from a summer in the woods, and you’re _not exactly_ dating an itinerant field ecologist who could be an underwear model?”

Hermione, trying in vain to find the lie, just nodded. 

“Hermione Granger,” Megan Miller from Topeka said with a sly smile, “I’m starting to think you’re some kind of free spirit.”

For the first time in her life, Hermione knew what it was to have a peer look at her and think that she was cool. Not smart or intimidating or nerdy or useful or abrasive or competent or brash but _cool._

“Oh, I don’t know.” Hermione looked up from the meticulous process of color-coding her day planner, her mouth twisted up in amusement. When she bit her lip, it was in a knowing, wicked way. “Okay, maybe just a little.” 

“I heard there’s a party in Carman tomorrow night. . .” Megan glanced up from her notebooks with a shy smile. 

Two roads diverged in a stuffy dorm room. Hermione dismounted from her high horse and acknowledged that it might ultimately benefit her to explore and possibly even embrace the one littered with red Solo cups. 

“Maybe we could go together.” She kept her voice casual, as though it did not contain within it the high tide of a sea change.

“Oh, thank God!” Megan said with measurable relief. “I’m so glad we’re already friends.”

It was definitely going to be a good semester. Not one to remember so much as one to _live._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably owe the line "one wild life" to [this Mary Oliver poem](https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html). And the dorm scene includes a nod to "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. The song playing as Hermione drives away is "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Led Zeppelin. 
> 
> And of course: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is being made from this creation.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I've been living in the world of this story for months now, and I'm so excited to share it with you all! I'd love to hear what you thought.
> 
> This work was written as part of a collaborative, multi-author project. Wondering where Draco has been all summer? Want to know why Neville and Pansy left the dance? Read all 8 interconnected stories of Camp Pigwidgeon in the summer of 1988 [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/rare_pair_spring_fling_2020/works/).
> 
> If you want to hear Charlie's mixtape for Hermione, it's on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3pe5JVGQKj7ZiKgwozPW22?si=wibg_0FZSl-bcglBMPKBvw). Brace yourselves for a strong '70s & '80s MOOD. 😂
> 
> It was important to me to end this fic in a moment of embracing being young, wild, and free, not knowing what the future holds! But I can see a possible reality in which Charlie and Hermione have a mostly mutually beneficial thing going on for some years: basically a torrid, on-and-off long-distance love affair (Sleeping together when they are both in town! Adventures! A summer backpacking in Europe! When they are together, they are _together_. When they aren't, they date around.), until Hermione grows up enough to see what she's going to miss out on if she doesn't nail it down. And then, I think, they could have a HEA. Start a small conservation non-profit together! Torment Molly Weasley by refusing to get married! Three dogs and no children! Etc. Just one in an infinite sea of headcanons! 😊
> 
> Find me on [tumblr as grangerdangerfics](https://grangerdangerfics.tumblr.com/). My asks and chat are always open - come say hey!
> 
> Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is being made from this creation.


End file.
